


dear true love

by cityboys



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pianist & Writer, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-09-25 07:01:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 72,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9808400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cityboys/pseuds/cityboys
Summary: They meet, somehow, in the backwaters of Saga Prefecture, Japan.





	1. disappear

**Author's Note:**

> a lot of the details are spun from the real-life city of karatsu, which hasetsu is based on. chapter titles from _dear evan hansen_ , with no actual relation to the story of the musical.

When Yuuri returns to Hasetsu for the first time in five years, it’s with a Juilliard degree and 7,000 undeserved euros freshly deposited in his bank account. 

When Yuuri returns to Hasetsu for the first time in five years, it's because Yuuko asks.

And when Yuuko asks—really, _really_ asks, managing to make her e-mail sound firm—it's always better to take the path of least resistance. 

Yuuri flies directly to Fukuoka from Warsaw, sending an abrupt message to Phichit with a promise to be back in New York for Christmas. The impromptu trip ends up involving too many airlines and too many connecting stops, but the disorganized mess, at the very least, leaves Yuuri no time or space to overthink what he’s doing and why. 

It’s convenient, until he arrives in Fukuoka and has to be confronted with two e-mails from Minako- _sensei_ and four missed FaceTime calls from Phichit. 

Phichit is a lot less scary than Minako can be, so Yuuri, mouth dry, tackles that hurdle first.

"I e-mailed your sister," Phichit sings, as soon as the call connects. He’s lying down on their couch in his pajamas, looking exactly like he’d been waiting for Yuuri to call. "She said she’ll be picking you up from the airport." 

"She—you what?" Yuuri searches the airport for the time, wracking his brain for timezone calculations. Midnight in Japan is 10 A.M in NYC, which means—

"You skipped class," he says, accusingly, turning back to the screen. 

"Anyone would if they got a random e-mail saying their roommate won’t be back until _Christmas_ ," Phichit manages around a yawn. "Glad to know you got there safe, though."

"Yeah—sorry for not—" Yuuri stops. "I’m sorry for being so sudden."

"It's fine," Phichit says, smiling drowsily at the screen. He doesn’t ask why Yuuri suddenly decided to come back to Hasetsu, just as Yuuri knew he wouldn’t, blinking and squinting on his end of the video call instead. "Hey, is that—is that Victor Nikiforov behind you?"

Yuuri whirls around, heart in his throat—only to be faced with the _new arrivals_ bookshelf outside the tiny airport bookstore, five-tier and supporting at least 200 translated copies of Victor Nikiforov’s most recent book, one shelf deliberately arranged to feature the author’s hundred kilo-watt grin on the back cover.

"Don’t scare me like that," he hisses back to his phone, face burning.

Phichit is predictably unapologetic, peering in closer like that would help him get a better look behind Yuuri. "Wow—wow, he gets an entire display to himself," he marvels. "In _Japan_."

Yuuri wants to point out that Victor’s not an internationally renowned writer for nothing, but it probably won’t go over well—considering he himself is guilty of having a U.S release version of the same book somewhere in his carry-on bag, and Phichit is sitting two steps away from a bookshelf full of all of Yuuri’s limited edition copies, one of which autographed and another won from an online prize draw.

He’s told Yuuri more than once that people don’t follow their favorite writers like they would a celebrity, but Yuuri will always argue that most writers, to be fair, don’t have fancafes and fan Twitter accounts and fan Tumblr blogs. 

Most writers, to be even more fair, aren’t Victor Nikiforov. 

"They’ve got no idea where he is, you know," Phichit says, conversationally. "His radio show’s went on hiatus two weeks ago, and he’s been inactive online since the last leg of his European tour. I’ve been following tweets for, like, two days now, and apparently he just up and disappeared without telling anyone where he was going."

Yuuri frowns, searching Phichit’s face for signs that he’s joking. "What? He _disappeared_?" 

Phichit gives him a one-shouldered shrug. "I don’t know—but the rumor mill’s saying he just took an impromptu vacation—guy deserves it, is what I think. He churns out books like he’s Stephen King—"

"Just like that," Yuuri says. "He up and went, just like that."

"Just like that. No one’s been able to contact him, according to the forums. But _how_ people know that, I have no idea." Phichit nods, contemplative about the efficiency of deprived fans. "Sounds like someone I know, though."

Yuuri sighs; he considers apologizing again, but this is Phichit, and he’s not even sure what exactly he’s apologizing for. 

"You should get some sleep," he says instead, because not even the chirp in his voice can hide how tired Phichit looks. "And don’t skip any more class."

"Sure," Phichit says. The word barely comes out through another yawn. "Yuuri?"

Yuuri stops his finger just before he can prematurely end the call. 

"Good job, by the way," Phichit says, smile soft as it is sleepy. "I already told him why you won’t be back, but call Ciao Ciao at some point. You can’t avoid him forever." 

Yuuri swallows. "I—" 

Before Yuuri can finish, Phichit hurries on, shaking his head; "And don’t pull a Victor Nikiforov on me! I know you said you’ll be back by Christmas, but I don’t want you to, like, not contact me at all, okay? I’m here to listen—or talk your ear off." 

Yuuri pushes up one corner of his mouth. He wants to say _I know_ , but that feels too presumptive, even after years of friendship. "Yeah. Okay."

Phichit’s smile doesn’t waver, but the furrow of his brows looks like he doesn’t really believe Yuuri. But he only waves a hand, blearily crooning his _bye_ ’s.

Yuuri’s so distracted saying his goodbyes back that he doesn’t notice his sister until he looks up, stopping right in front of her and almost dropping his suitcase by the handle.

"Mari- _nee—_ " 

"A little warning woulda been nice," Mari says, looking Yuuri up and down like she’d forgotten his lower body exists.

Other than that, she gives no indication that they haven’t seen each other in five years, has barely talked, and Yuuri doesn’t really know whether he appreciates that.

"Sorry," he says.

"It's fine," Mari returns, a more resigned echo of Phichit as she gestures impatiently for him to hand over his carry-on backpack. "Let’s go, let’s go. Everything’s really busy, and I need to _sleep_." 

"Busy?" Yuuri says, falling into step beside her. It strikes him as instinctive, following after his sister, even after months and months. "Because of the festival?"

"And the wedding," Mari says. "The town hasn't had a wedding in years so now everyone's excited. Lotsa preparations around the Castle and the hot springs." Dryly, she adds; "You came at a good time."

"Yuuko-san asked me," Yuuri says, voice quiet but fumbling at having to use dialect he hasn’t heard in so long. "She—she wanted me to come back for the wedding." 

"I know." The look that Mari gives him is fleeting but sharp, then she shrugs and sighs, a perfect replica of his own. "At least _someone_ can get you back."

It’s pointed, but Yuuri doesn’t say anything. 

Mari leads him to the parking lot without a word, throwing his luggage into the trunk and waving him in. It’s the same car their family has always used, but Yuuri feels out-of-place in it nonetheless, a boy now too big for a child’s toy car. 

"By the way," Mari says, sliding into the driver’s seat, "you might wanna sleep on my floor tonight. Or Mom and Dad's room. Wherever."

Yuuri pauses in the middle of putting his seat belt on. "Why?"

"There's all sorts of boxes in yours," Mari says. "We had to clear out one of the older, bigger rooms without warning so we sorta just—threw all the stuff into your room."

"Thanks," Yuuri tells her, flat. "Thanks a lot."

"No problem." Mari flashes a quick grin, out of place on her face as she starts the engine. "Welcome home, little brother." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yu-topia is a lot quieter than Yuuri remembers. 

He knows for a fact that Hasetsu is far livelier than a quiet coastal town should be, and his family’s hot springs resort has always been proof of that. There were always guests yelling about soccer and baseball in the main area, old men gossiping in the hot springs, his sister nagging at thin air before she realizes that Yuuri has snuck off to Minako’s studio yet again. 

Or maybe it’s because they come back at around 1 A.M that it's all quiet, everyone asleep and the entire town still. 

Mari’s gracious enough to give Yuuri a futon on the floor by her bed, which Yuuri accepts, suddenly too tired to even bother changing. He falls into dreamless sleep that night, listening to his sister’s familiar light snoring and the unprovoked creaks echoing perpetually across the house.

When he wakes up, the sun’s shining on his face, and his back is sore.

He rolls over and has to take a long moment to remember he’s not in New York, nor Warsaw, nor even Tokyo.

It’s like a switch being turned on, going about his morning routine from what feels like ages ago—but it’s muscle memory, padding through the wooden floors of the inn, dipping into the water until his face feels comfortably flushed, and walking into the dining area to his mother walking out of the backroom with a tray balancing too many _sake_ bottles for so early in the day.

" _Yuuri,_ " she says, beaming. "Welcome home!"

"I’m—I’m home," Yuuri manages lamely, rushing to get out of her way. He ends up watching her deliver the alcohol to one of the tables, overwhelmed with a feeling that’s equal parts deja vu and unwanted nostalgia. 

"Good morning, Yuuri!"—his father, popping out from behind the bar—"Mari said you got back late last night."

"Yeah," Yuuri says, blinking fast at the sudden blur of constant movement. "Around midnight."

"Did’ya get some sleep at least?" his father says, not pausing for even a second in his rummaging. "Jetlag not too bad?"

Yuuri feels wide awake, so awake that everything feels almost a little too real; he nods, stiff. 

His father smiles. "Any plans? We could use an extra pair of hands—you wanna help?" 

_Not really_ , but Yuuri searches his itinerary for the day and finds that he doesn’t even know what he’s back in Hasetsu to do to begin with, so he nods again, tripping over a quiet, "S-Sure." 

His father smiles at him, wide, and Yuuri feels six all over again, coaxed out of a petty tantrum and validated with a pleased smile. 

He blames that for how willingly he accepts the list of chores given to him: bring the used glasses to the sink, sweep up the late October leaves outside, fold towels under Mari’s ever watchful eye. This is muscle memory, too, and it’s easy to get back to the swing of things, from the way he finds things where they’ve always been to how guests recognize him without batting an eye, clapping him on the back and saying some variation of, "Ah, Yuuri-kun’s back!"

And no one asks _why_ he’s back. It’s like he was never gone, like there wasn’t a five-year gap between the last time they saw him and now, and like he hadn’t come back without warning anyone.

The silence nags at him, if he lets it, but Yuuri takes it all wordlessly, pretends not to notice the framed pictures of him in the main area every time he’s unfortunate enough to have to pass through it. Like if he doesn’t look at it, the bitter taste won’t return to the back of his throat, and he won’t be reminded of the fact that there are surely articles and YouTube videos up online now, and Celestino’s probably still waiting for a call from him.

Some things, luckily, are mindless enough that they’re _not_ , and the monotony of chores making a comeback from his childhood lulls Yuuri into an escapist mode of existing. 

The late autumn sunset has taken over the sky by the time he comes back from sweeping outside, back even more sore and dreading getting some time to actually think—only to be trampled onto the floor by a warm weight, sending him, and an old-fashioned leaf broom, crashing to the floor.

"Ah," says his mother from somewhere above him, a chuckle in her voice. "He got lonely, huh?"

_He,_ Yuuri finds out after rolling himself over painfully, is a huge mocha-colored dog—a dog licking Yuuri’s face excitedly, one paw on his chest. 

Yuuri, despite himself, is tickled into giggling. 

"Bring him back to his owner, yeah, Yuuri?" his mother adds, laughing along. "Vicchan just probably got out of the baths. He’s staying in the old banquet hall." 

It’s an effort to get back to his feet with a dog willingly cuddling him, and Yuuri’s regretful to untangle himself away. It’s an even bigger effort to comprehend what his mother just said, but he takes one look at the smiling dog panting up at him and allows his heart to melt, ushering him along past the main area.

The dog’s face is familiar—but Yuuri can’t place it, chalks it up to following too many dog picture accounts and the fact that all dogs are equal in greatness. 

"Vicchan," Yuuri repeats, smiling down at the dog. "Is that your owner’s name? What about you—"

"Makkachin!" 

Yuuri stops at the same time the dog hurtles forward—and then everything short-circuits, stops working in Yuuri’s brain under the strain of having to register too many things all at once.

First, the dog’s name is Makkachin. Second, his owner is standing at the end of the hall, five steps away, hair damp and wearing the inn’s green robe like it’s commissioned couture. 

The dog’s name is Makkachin, and his owner is Victor Nikiforov.

Yuuri’s only just taken this in when Victor—universally known writer and unwitting international celebrity—smiles at him, and Yuuri’s not entirely sure, all of a sudden, why human beings still haven’t developed the ability to turn invisible at will.

He almost doesn’t notice when Victor, eyes sparkling, straightens up to point at him and say; "Oh—" 

And because it’s the next best thing when his mortal body won’t allow him the comfort of invisibility to deal with the constant cycle of _what the hell is going on_ —

—Yuuri runs before he can hear what Victor says next.

 

 

 

 

 

"I know," Yuuko says, calmly pouring the tea.

"You know," Yuuri parrots back, taking the cup with a murmured _thank you_. "You _knew_ Victor was staying at my family’s place— _is_ staying." 

"Your family’s place is your place too, Yuuri-kun," Yuuko says, waving a finger at him, voice mild. "What difference does it make?"

Yuuri sighs, putting his hands together tightly on his lap. "It’s _Victor_ , Yuuko-san." 

"He’s here for a vacation like everyone else," Yuuko says, sitting down across from him. "And since when have you called me Yuuko-san? Say Yuu-chan like you used to." 

With Minako-sensei still out of town, Yuuri’s only choice of refuge had been Yuuko’s house, and he’d run all three uphill streets towards it without thinking—a fact that he regrets now, sitting in a living room full of wedding things he’s not in the mind space to comprehend at the moment. 

In some ways, though, it’s fitting that this is where he ended up. It was Yuuko, working her first job at the Hasetsu Castle library, that introduced Yuuri to non-school books when he’d been desperate to avoid both people _and_ piano practice. It was also her, two years later, that gifted him Victor’s first published novel as a middle school graduation gift. 

Yuuri still thinks about how that felt, sometimes—how it felt to be on the cusp of adolescence and reading a novel written by someone only four years older, twenty-years-old and already proudly on the New York Times’ Bestseller List whereas Yuuri was still only thinking about New York as a distant concept in a distant world. 

"Didn’t you want to meet him?" Yuuko says now, leaning forward.

Yuuri sips his tea. "I _did_ meet him already."

"Yeah?" Yuuko blinks. "Just now?"

"No," Yuuri says shortly. "I used to attend his New York signings." 

"Right, you told me this!" Yuuko is the only person Yuuri knows who can _sparkle_ at will, and she displays this particular talent now, eyes bright. "You told him he’s your inspiration, didn’t you? And he said—" She sighs, wistful, which is how Yuuri knows she’s about to do a Victor impression; sure enough, she puts her cup down and places a hand on top of her chest, the other over her forehead. "He said, ‘Why, I cannot be more _honored_ to be inspiring such a beautiful boy!’" 

She says this in English, and Yuuri just stares at her, caught between sheepish and impassive. Then he remembers what he’d been about to say next, and he can’t help the way his expression sours. "That was the first time I met him," he says. "The next time I showed up to an event, he didn’t even remember who I was." 

Yuuko’s mischievous grin gentles. "Well, you can’t expect him to remember every single fan, you know?" 

Yuuri knows this, rationally, but it still stings, that Victor can write "Your kind words keep me going, Yuuri!" on the second page of a book, complete with a heart next to his signature, and then stare blankly at Yuuri the next time, asking if Yuuri wanted a photo. He knows it has nothing to do with him, personally—but maybe that’s what stings more, the reminder that he’s not even a blip on Victor Nikiforov’s radar.

He’s not asking to be remembered by a high-profile Hollywood celebrity here, just to be remembered if even fleetingly by the person that inspired him to get up and leave Hasetsu to begin with.

"He’s just—he’s all nice words," Yuuri mumbles, not quite meaning the bite he wants to be there.

"He’s an author," Yuuko says, gentle. "It’s his job to use his words to make you feel nice."

She’s right, because that was what Victor did, that was what he stood for: Victor Nikiforov’s novels made dreams and fairytales come true, made them accessible, made them so much realer than anyone could ever think of. He was both Prince Charming and the fairy godmother, granting wishes left and right with words and words alone. He was love and warmth and _happily ever after_ personified. 

Yuuko’s still smiling tenderly at him. " _You_ don’t remember your own fans, do you?"

Yuuri doesn’t waste a beat. "I don’t have any."

Yuuko just makes a soft little huff that Yuuri doesn’t particularly want to understand, before plastering a close-mouthed smile back on. "Keep telling yourself that, Yuuri-kun."

Yuuri opens his mouth, closes it, stares down at what he can see of his reflection on the surface of his tea. "Is this why you wanted me to—" _Come home_ , is what Yuuko had used, in her e-mail. It doesn’t fit right in Yuuri’s mouth. "—come back?" 

Yuuko tilts her head. "Sure? But mostly, I just wanted you here for the wedding."

Yuuri stares at her. "As a pianist?"

Yuuko stares right back. "No, silly," she says, like Yuuri’s being ridiculous. He’s not. "As a friend."

Yuuri keeps staring.

"Takeshi would have wanted you in the entourage," Yuuko goes on, pouring herself more tea like they’re talking about the weather, "but we thought you might be too busy to come much earlier. We want you in the wedding, though, you know that, right? It’s been a while, I know—but we want you there. As one of our longest friends." 

Yuuri, really, doesn’t know what he should say to that.

Yuuko gives him a toothy smile. "Of course, it wouldn’t hurt if we have internationally acclaimed Classical pianist Katsuki Yuuri play the wedding march for us." 

"Yuuko-san," Yuuri sighs.

"Yuu-chan," she corrects. "It’s always Yuu-chan. No matter what."

Yuuri stares at her—taking in how she still has her hair up in the same ponytail she’s always put it in, the same way Yuuri’s still wearing the same kind of glasses, and how she smiles the same way she always has, even though they’re much more grown up now, even though she’s getting married in a month.

Yuuri sighs again, but he nods. 

"Yuu-chan," he echoes, and that, at least, sounds like it fits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yuuri, while at Yuuko’s, had made the mistake of allowing himself to forget why he went there so hurriedly in the first place; it’s his own fault, then, that his heartbeat picks back up so fast, panicked, when he takes one step past Yu-topia’s entrance gate and hears Victor’s voice. 

He’s speaking in—in Russian, fast and weary and hard all at once. It’s gotten dark, and it takes Yuuri a few seconds to find Victor standing by one of the trees, one hand in the pocket of his coat and the other holding up a phone to his ear. 

Yuuri stares, unabashed, curiously watching the stiff set of Victor’s shoulders, and the way he reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose, obviously frustrated with an argument. 

Then he looks up, sees Yuuri, and breaks out into a smile.

Yuuri, instinctively, takes a step back, flushing. "I didn’t mean to—" he says, tries to say, only for his voice to be drowned out by whatever Victor says into the phone before hanging up, far too cheery for someone who’d just been replying in monotones two seconds ago. 

Yuuri takes that time to try and speedwalk away, but Victor calls out; "Wait—Yuuri—" 

He’s imagined this scenario many, many times, has imagined Victor calling out to him at a signing and recognizing him—but this is an entirely different situation altogether. 

Yuuri turns back, hesitant, wary. His cheeks feel warm. "You know my name."

It's not a question, and Victor is confused, blinking rapidly as he comes forward into the light. Yuuri steps back; the idea of being close to Victor Nikiforov makes his body want to move away by instinct, and he obliges.

"Of course I do," Victor says, voice low but tone mournful. "You performed at Alice Tully with the Juilliard Orchestra." 

Yuuri’s heart jumps at that, instinctive, happy at being recognized—then his thoughts catch up, and he narrows his eyes, suspicious, because something about this doesn’t match up. He sighs, tries again, "Why do you know my name?"

Victor blinks, like he’s not used to being called out on his blatant lies. Yuuri can’t imagine why, because Victor sure isn’t subtle about it. He can see the exact moment Victor resigns himself to having to tell the truth. 

"I asked your parents," Victor says. "I wanted to know if it was something I did that made you run." 

"Oh," Yuuri says, slow, pushing past a sudden spike of disappointment. "I was—I was in a rush." 

"I see!" Victor brightens. "So it wasn’t something I did?"

"No—" Yuuri shakes his head slightly, taking another step back. "How did you know that I—that I performed at—" 

"There are newspaper clippings of you, right by the entrance," Victor says. "Your parents were more than happy to share when I asked, the first day I was here. I was told you were in New York, though—"

"I came back," Yuuri says, shortly. It is, all of a sudden, hard to meet Victor’s eyes, so he doesn’t. "Are you—are _you_ not supposed to be here?" 

There’s a frozen second. "Pardon me?"

"I mean—it sounded like—" Yuuri gestures aimlessly downwards, at the phone that has long since disappeared back into Victor’s pocket. His face still feels way too hot. "You’re not here _illegally_ or anything, right? Are you running away from—" 

Victor huffs a laugh. "No, nothing like that. No crime syndicates." Yuuri finally chances a look up, just in time to see Victor raise both arms, bent at the elbow, lean and graceful, an _I surrender_ gesture. Yuuri tries not to follow the line of his shoulders. "No mafia after my tail, no FBI. Why would you think that?"

Victor has an accent Yuuri still can’t place, even now, an amalgamation of all sorts of things that Yuuri only feels hyper aware of after years of listening in closely to his schoolmates to try and figure out what he’s saying the same way and what he’s saying differently. It feels worldly, the way Celestino’s occasional swing from American phrases to Italian intonations of Yuuri’s name feels like a reminder of his years of experience when Yuuri and Phichit aren’t too busy being amused by their mentor’s dramatic flair. 

Being around Victor should feel much the same way, except it’s Victor Nikiforov. 

Victor Nikiforov with a successful novel debut at age twenty. Victor Nikiforov, who is a known hardcore philanthropist. A very vocal advocate for the arts. Fluent in and capable of writing novels in three languages. Victor Nikiforov is a lot of impossibilities come to life in a career meant for the quiet and self-isolated, and Yuuri has fallen into that world unfairly expecting to be someone special in it.

He’s Yuuri’s inspiration personified, is the bottom line, and he’s _here_ , physically, just when Yuuri has decided to resign himself into living the rest of his life quietly.

If it wasn’t for meeting Yuuko again, Yuuri would be very much convinced he’s having a very long jetlag-induced dream. But there’s too much cognitive dissonance at work for that to be an option, and for Yuuri to know what to do.

"Hasetsu just isn’t—it’s not usually anyone’s first choice," he replies too late, quiet. "Unless they’re running away from something." He clears his throat. "I—I really didn’t mean to eavesdrop."

Victor’s smile is too bright. "It’s not like you understood any of it, of course."

The disappointment can be excused, and Yuuri’s discomfort around him understandable—but there’s just something underneath Victor’s obvious personable tendencies, and the unintended charisma behind it, that doesn’t sit well with Yuuri. Maybe it’s the lack of care in the way Victor speaks, or maybe it’s just that Yuuri hates being looked at like this: insignificant past the few things the other person knows about him. 

Yuuri stares at Victor, suddenly ruffled, reminded of all the times he’s left a signing feeling dissatisfied.

Victor misunderstands the look. "Do you know who I am?"

"Of _course_ I know who you are." Yuuri wishes he was above being offended by that, but he’s not. "The problem is no one knows _where_ you are. The world thinks you’ve disappeared."

"Don’t know how I could have managed that," Victor says, smiling still. "You won’t tell the world, would you, Yuuri?"

Victor says his name weird, too much emphasis on the _u,_ too intimate considering the only times they’ve talked are over a fresh copy of a newly released book—none of which are instances Victor even remembers. 

If Yuuri looks a little too incredulous, Victor would just have to forgive it, by virtue of being ridiculous. "I won’t," Yuuri says, with yet another step back. Monotone, he adds; "Enjoy your stay." 

"I will." Victor takes one step forward, and they go like that for a few moments, Yuuri blatantly trying to force space between them and Victor not having it. "Your parents told me I can enlist your help with that."

"No," Yuuri says, instinctive. "Actually, you—you can’t stay here." 

Victor just blinks at him. 

"There are nicer places," Yuuri continues, senselessly. 

"It’s a nice town," Victor points out, all too close, standing half an arm’s length away. He hums, leaning back to tap a finger against his lips. "Are you always this honest about wanting people away, Yuuri?"

Yuuri flushes red. "It’s just—it’s _weird_ —"

"I didn’t realize I wasn’t allowed to visit this part of Japan," Victor says, cheerful. "I _was_ here before you were."

Yuuri’s mouth falls open at that, and he gets ready to point out that he was _born_ here, that he grew up here—but Victor’s right. Of course he’s right. It has nothing to do with Yuuri, Victor being here.

It’s still not fair, though, that of all the times Yuuri could have come back, it just had to be in the same month Victor Nikiforov has decided to spend his _vacation_ here.

Maybe that’s just karma at work.

"Right." Yuuri nods dully, turning away, already booking a flight back to New York in his head. "Yes. Fine. I’ll see you around." 

But Victor catches him by the wrist, shamelessly spinning him back. "Wait, but Yuuri," he says, eyes innocent. "I’m serious about you showing me around."

"What?" Yuuri says, squirming.

"I asked your parents about places I can visit, too," Victor says, a pout in his voice. "And they said I should ask _you_ to take me places."

"I have work to do," Yuuri says, immediately, hoping it’s not obvious that he’s paling at the mere thought of having to acknowledge Victor Nikiforov’s physical existence any further. "Lots of it."

Victor’s actually pouting now, lip jutted out. "Your sister said you don’t regularly work at the inn anyway." 

"I came back for a vacation of my own," Yuuri says, squirming more pointedly. "And I _do_ have work to do." 

Victor beams. "Music to practice?"

Yuuri narrows his eyes. "How do you know that?"

"Newspaper clippings," Victor reminds him. "But didn’t you just come back from the International Chopin Comp—"

Yuuri, heaving a huge sigh, manually snatches his arm from Victor’s hold. " _Okay,_ " he says, probably loud enough to be heard from inside the house. "Okay. I’ll—I’ll go with you."

"Really? Great!" Victor really has a talent for beaming, his whole face brightening so much at the littlest things that it hurts to look at him. "Tell me your—"

The front entrance slides open, interrupting him, and they both turn to see Mari there, face unreadable.

"Oh," she says. "You found my brother." To Yuuri, she asks; "Where did you run off to?"

"Yuu-chan’s," Yuuri says, turning away from Victor’s blinding smile. He nods at his general direction before brushing past his sister with; "I’m tired. I’m going to bed early."

"Lazy," Mari calls after him.

Yuuri spares three seconds to turn back and stick his tongue out at her. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

News travels fast even if you're not _in_ Hasetsu, and it takes all of two days for Minako-sensei to come back and leave disgruntled messages on Yuuri’s voicemail. Yuuri doesn’t actually listen to them, letting the first five seconds play and deleting them before he can make it past Minako saying his name, chastising. 

It’s excuse enough not to hang around to help the people gathered in the inn’s main area starting to make food for the upcoming festival, even if it’s with a heavy heart that he tells his parents he’s off to the studio.

At the same time that Victor comes back from walking Makkachin.

"Oh," he says, mild. "Off somewhere?"

Yuuri single-mindedly ignores the part of him that rejoices at Victor initiating a conversation so casually. "I'm going to my old piano teacher's studio," he says, biting down on his lip while Victor watches him put on his shoes. When he looks up, the stare that meets him is contemplative. "Do you want—do you want to come along?"

It's a fleeting beat of surprise, but it's there. "Of course," Victor says, and manages to make it sound like that was his plan along. 

They’re only a meter out the door when Yuuri regrets it. He can’t very well tell Victor to go back inside, though, even as every part of his head screams at him to do it, so he settles for walking as far away as possible, falling a step behind Victor and Makkachin. It doesn't do wonders; it’s hard walking beside Victor for reasons Yuuri can’t quite articulate to himself, but it is, somehow, equally hard to watch Victor’s back. 

It’s just _hard,_ to be around Victor. 

It make Yuuri’s stomach churn and his heartbeat pitter-patter, and he spends the entire walk to Minako’s hugging his arms close to his body, never once meeting Victor’s eyes.

According to a half-asleep Mari—interrogated at 2 A.M. when Yuuri had woken up and had to wrestle with realizing that he hadn’t dreamt Victor up in Hasetsu—Victor arrived a week before Yuuri did, showing up early morning with two suitcases and his dog. He’s clearly a fixture in the inn already, because Yuuri knows for a fact Victor had been drinking with some of the other guests late last night, and because Yuuri’s mother had slipped into calling him Vicchan already, the syllables of which not lacking in any sort of affection whatsoever. 

Victor is friendly, says Mari, which is a lot coming from someone who pays more attention to band members and idols more than she does the inn’s customers on a good day, the regulars included. He’d paid for a full month’s rent on their biggest room, and had taken full advantage of his accommodations, but hasn’t been vocal, exactly, about why he’s staying so long.

"Not that it’s any of our business," Mari had reminded Yuuri, before rolling over and falling right back to sleep.

Victor’s too easily amused to be someone who’s not willingly in Hasetsu, though, if not much else—this seems to be his first time _really_ out of Yu-topia, because he points at every other thing and asks Yuuri to explain, as if a regular old convenience store that’s been there since before Mari was born needs particular poetic description.

Yuuri tries to sate the curiosity by occasionally giving muted one-word answers, but the near silence seems to neither bother nor deter Victor. He’s a bright-eyed chatterbox all the way up to the studio’s front door, and Yuuri’s almost apologetic when Minako opens the door and has to take a few moments to stare at Victor.

"You—" she begins, and Yuuri empathizes. "You’re—"

"Hi," Victor says, actually waving. "You’re Yuuri’s old piano teacher, yes? I wasn’t expecting you to be so young."

Yuuri wants to snort at that, and he disguises half of it in a cough, zipping up his light jacket for effect. It doesn’t work, and Minako turns steely eyes at him. "You know Victor Nikiforov?" 

"I—" Yuuri says, finally allowing himself a look at Victor. Victor smiles back at him expectantly. "He’s just—he’s been staying at the inn for the past week."

"Yuuri’s showing me around," Victor adds, like this is a thing they civilly came to agreement on. 

Minako looks between the two of them before shoving her door wider, gesturing Victor and Makkachin in first. Yuuri’s grateful, partly because he doesn’t know what he would have done if he’d so much as brushed arms with Victor, and partly because he gets to accept Minako’s raised eyebrow and be comforted by the fact that he’s not alone in recognizing how bizarre this entire situation is.

"What brings you to Hasetsu?" Minako says, rummaging around the studio’s mini-kitchen for drinks. Makkachin runs in circles around her, excited about seeing a new face. 

For a second, Yuuri thinks the question’s directed at him, and he starts panicking, searching his head for answers that aren’t there—but then Victor answers, and he’s saved. 

"Just a tourist," Victor says, with the same cheery cadence he’d used on Yuuri. 

Yuuri takes it back—he’d thought, last night, that Victor spoke without care, but he listens in now and thinks it might be the opposite. Victor’s straightforward enough, but he _is_ careful, saying words he knows will be accepted no matter what, almost afraid of rejection, of disagreement. 

Yuuri can relate to that, can relate to being afraid of not being easily accepted, welcomed, but it’s a strange thing, to recognize that same sentiment in Victor Nikiforov, of all people.

He wanders down the hall, leaving that conversation behind him, and into the third room on the left. Minako’s studio is a narrow place with its own small kitchen and receiving area, and the rest of the space is taken up by five piano rooms, two on one side and three on the other. The last one on the left side has always been Yuuri’s room, even if it was never labeled, and this was the place he missed most, his first year at Juilliard.

His residence hall in freshman year had two practice rooms with Steinway L pianos on his floor, and the grand piano had felt foreign after years of playing on the uprights in Minako’s place. Playing on the grand piano up until then had been something reserved for bigger things—galas, recitals, and eventually, concerts, auditions. 

Not really thinking, he sits down, running his hand through the keys before playing a part of Minuet in G. It’s the first piece he’s ever played in front of a big audience, hardly taller than the bench, and the memory remains fresh, even though the upright doesn’t feel as familiar under the pads of his fingers as it used to, like the car had felt when Mari had picked him up from the airport. The same exact thing in every conceivable way, and yet the feeling different. 

Yuuri doesn’t get the time to pursue that train of thought, looking up to a knock on the open door.

"Are you not going to play more?’ 

Yuuri lowers the fallboard back over the keys before he looks up at Victor, who’s watching him with unreadable eyes. "No," he says, wincing at how dismissive he sounds. "Just—just seeing how it feels."

"No one uses this room much anymore, you know," Minako says, coming up behind Victor. "Not since you left."

It’s been _five_ years, Yuuri almost points out, but Victor beats him to talking; "Do your students just use the other rooms?"

"Not like there’s a lot of them," Minako says, cracking open a can of beer in broad daylight. It’s comforting to see that much hasn’t changed. "There just aren’t as many people interested as there used to be."

Yuuri hadn’t realized he’s been staring at Victor until he notices Victor’s eyebrows scrunch together at that, lasting for two long seconds before his face smooths back into an unaffected expression. When he sees Yuuri looking, though, he just smiles, like they’re sharing a private joke.

Despite himself, Yuuri flushes, turning away, trying and failing to tune back into Minako’s voice.

It might be a good thing, that Victor had come along, because his presence leaves Minako no time alone with Yuuri, no time to talk to him the way she probably wanted to, when she’d left those voicemails. Yuuri doesn’t particularly want to talk about it, and it’s complete instinct when he releases a sigh of relief as soon as they walk away from Minako’s building, Victor promising to visit Minako’s bar and Yuuri just ready to leave.

"Is something wrong, Yuuri?" 

When Yuuri looks at Victor this time, he’s blinded by the sun shining from behind Victor’s head, and he averts his eyes, childishly vexed for no reason whatsoever. "No," he says, which seems to be the current winner in terms of words he’s said the most times to Victor since yesterday.

Victor, as is the pattern now, isn’t discouraged. He also has no intentions of being predictable, because they walk in silence for all of two steps before he asks; "Did you ever have a crush on Minako?" 

Yuuri almost trips. " _What?_ "

"I mean, you didn’t seem comfortable while we were there—"

"Okay, but why would you assume _that_ first?" Yuuri’s aware that his face is probably red, but it’s suddenly so much easier to look at Victor, disbelieving. " _No_ , she’s—she’s older than my mom, she’s—" _Practically family_ , is the right thing to say, but he can’t bring himself to. "—my godmother. My teacher. It’s Minako-sensei." 

"Then," Victor continues, recovering smoothly, so unapologetic it rivals even Phichit’s occasional lack of utter shame. "Are there any other past lovers that are making you uncomfortable about being here?" 

"No comment," Yuuri automatically says. 

Victor raises an eyebrow down at him, but Yuuri can’t read his expression. "Is that a yes?" 

"No, it’s a _no comment_."

"Okay, well, I—"

"Stop—" Yuuri says, and Victor does, one foot in front of him as he quite literally stops mid-walk. "—doing that." 

Victor looks at him, uncomprehending. "Stop doing what?" 

Yuuri’s throat feels tight, for some reason—not the same way it feels when he’s about to cry, but tight as in it’s difficult to talk, like his brain and vocal cords and heart have fallen out of sync with each other, all thanks to Victor Nikiforov being around. It’s one thing to be following his Goodreads page, unwinding after a day of practice by checking the blog, the _Ask the Author_ tab, searching for hints about a new book because Victor never goes more than a month without working on something. 

He is an idea, a creator, a man playing God over worlds that Yuuri has gotten addicted to, has turned to for escapism and inspiration and motivation, and Victor being here, asking something so silly and surprising as whether or not he liked one of his mother’s oldest friends—it’s too much.

"Nothing," he mumbles. 

A voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like a younger Mari says he’s being a brat about it, but it’s too real all at once when Yuuri wants nothing to be real, and he wishes Victor would stop making it worse. 

Victor’s already distracted, thankfully, raising a hand above his head to shield his eyes from the sun while he squints at something far off. "Yuuri, what’s that?"

It takes a lot of blinking for Yuuri to even make out what Victor’s now unabashedly pointing at.

"Oh," Yuuri says, dull. "That’s Hasetsu Castle."

The way Victor suddenly glows at that gives Yuuko’s sparkling a run for its money. " _Castle?_ " 

"It’s not—" Words aren’t working for Yuuri today, more so than usual. "It’s not actually a castle—it’s just a local museum now, with a library—"

Victor doesn’t say another word, but the way he widens his eyes at Yuuri is plea enough, a child being asked to be taken on the carousel.

And Yuuri, because the path of least resistance is always best outside of competition, sighs and leads the way.

 

 

 

 

 

"One more!" Victor calls, smiling wide, lifting Makkachin on his hind legs and flashing two fingers up in the air. 

Yuuri sighs, and takes the picture.

Victor is easily, easily, _easily_ excited, and very prone to taking pictures in ways that would be uncomfortable if Yuuri hadn’t spent so long in close proximity to Phichit. The tourist-y selfies would be fine, except they’re all taken by Yuuri on his own phone, patient and resigned, but alarming for his phone storage.

Seeing as he has a separate album for photos taken candidly at Victor’s events, though, Yuuri respects the karmic justice of it all.

Never mind that there are definitely overexcited butterflies in his stomach. 

When both Makkachin and Victor bound on over—Victor not even asking to inspect the photo—Yuuri says; "Why don’t you use your own phone?"

"It’s off," Victor chirps. 

"Then—" Yuuri blinks. "Turn it on?"

Victor pouts at him—before reaching up above Yuuri’s head, too sudden for Yuuri to so much as step back. "But that defeats the purpose of turning it off to begin with, Yuuri."

Yuuri flushes at the unexpected contact, even as Victor retracts his hand and procures a small fallen leaf from atop Yuuri’s hair by way of explanation.

"I’ll ask for the photos before I leave, don’t you worry." Victor smiles at him, huge and winning. "Don’t delete them until then." 

Yuuri, cheeks still warm, frowns. "How long are you here for?"

Victor hums, studying the leaf with too much concentration. "I have to be back by the 25th."

"Of November?"

"December."

"So—" Yuuri says, regretting his question at once. "Christmas, then."

"I suppose." Victor's next hum is so blasé that Yuuri almost doubts if December 25th really is Christmas. "I'll leave early December, then."

He sounds like he doesn't even have plans to leave yet, and absolutely content in that, which is unfair—unfair when Yuuri feels like he’s floating in uncertainty, just being thrown this way and that by life back in Yu-topia and Minako-sensei summoning him and Victor talking to him like they’ve known each other for a while.

Victor treats everyone that way, though, language barrier be damned as he smiles and greets _hello_ at faces unfamiliar to even Yuuri. He’s courteous in a way so natural that it’s hard to watch without feeling drawn in, and so unerringly attentive to Yuuri’s three-syllable answers during the walk here that it’s hard to keep it up without giving in to the bigger part of him that really does want to impress Victor.

It’s a lot of things at odds with each other, but that seems to be the way Victor operates, something you just have to accept as you go along. It’s hard for Yuuri to accept this, that Victor is, essentially, a _stranger_ , even though Yuuri has felt so close to him through his writing, even though Yuuri has felt, sometimes, that he’s understood something new about Victor every time he reads a new book of his. 

But fiction is called fiction because it contains at most only a disguised sliver of the truth it’s constructed around, and Victor, just by standing in front of Yuuri, is proof of that fact—that Victor is so much bigger and so much more than the personal closeness Yuuri hadn’t realized he’d imagined into existing, and it’s uncomfortable, because Yuuri doesn’t know how to step past the Victor he’s always thought he knew through the intimacy of Victor’s writing and accept that he doesn’t quite understand him.

He leads them inside before he can work his heart, mind and soul into short-circuiting.

Or—Victor leads them, inside, really, catching the crook of Yuuri’s left arm and tugging at him excitably. 

It’s all Yuuko from there, as wide-eyed as she’d been when she’d first gushed to Yuuri about Victor, and that’s familiar, that’s knowable. She doesn’t bother being subtle as she eyes Victor, places both hands on the counter and stares at him the whole time, gleeful and chatty and so brightly Yuu-chan that it’s painful to look at her next to an equally bright Victor. Yuuri understands, though, he really, really does, and Victor doesn’t seem to mind at all, all smiles as he takes out a pre-prepared autographing pen.

Hasetsu Library is conveniently empty except for them, and Yuuri loses himself between shelves while Victor signs a small notepad’s worth of autographs for a starry-eyed Yuuko. 

If the upright at Minako’s studio and the car he’d been picked up on were pieces of a past that doesn’t feel like they fit him anymore, the library is that feeling embodied, a labyrinthian space that’s almost claustrophobic in the memories it brings back—he’d sat on this bay window the last time he’d read one of Victor’s books here, had used that xerox machine to photo copy the music sheets for his audition piece, had needed a stool to reach this particular high shelf, when he’d first visited Yuuko here.

It hadn’t yet sunk in, being in Yu-topia, but the surreality of a place having a life of its own even after five years of being detached from it sinks in fast now, not unwelcome so much as unexpected. It’s a luxury, to go back to a place and be taken back within the swing of things without a hitch, even after years of not properly contacting anyone.

"How obscure," Victor says, from right behind Yuuri—

—who jumps two feet in the air, dropping the book he hadn’t noticed he’d taken out from one of the shelves. 

Victor smiles at him, and Yuuri prays he’s not being laughed at as Victor bends to pick up the book, curious.

"Caroline Alice Roberts," he reads off the cover of what appears to be a poem anthology, worn and untranslated and completely out of place in between Tanazakis and Akutagawas. "You like poetry, Yuuri?"

The narrow area in between shelves is far too little space between him and Victor, but there’s nowhere to scuttle off to with Victor blocking the way, so Yuuri settles for gaping—at the book, at Victor, at the old wooden flooring of the library. "No?"

"No?" Victor echoes, and Yuuri doesn’t understand the amusement in his voice. "Do you not like reading?"

"I _do_ ," Yuuri says, defensive, snatching his gaze away from the floor to meet Victor’s. "Just—not poetry, usually."

"What, then," Victor says, _"Usually_?" 

Yuuri opens his mouth, closes it—his jaw is becoming very familiar with this gesture around Victor—only to say; "Sheet music."

Victor’s own mouth falls open in an unpronounced _ah_. "All the time?"

"All the time," Yuuri pushes out. 

Victor nods, like that makes sense. "Expected of a music prodigy."

"I’m not—" He’s not a prodigy, is the thing. " _Stop_."

"You said that earlier," Victor says, mildly, flipping through the book. "Stop doing what?"

"Stop acting like we’re—" It takes a while to find the right word, especially around someone who picks them for a living. "—confidantes." 

Victor blinks a lot, and Yuuri waits for guilt, or some semblance of it, hand-in-hand with the urge to take his words back, but then Victor tilts his head like Yuuko had last night, and says; "But we are?"

Yuuri, language ever an enemy, just stares.

"Yesterday, you said no one comes here unless they’re running away from something," Victor says, tone so light they might as well be talking about what the seasons are like in Kyushu. "Doesn’t that mean you’re running away from something too, Yuuri?"

It’s too callous a line to be paired with such a sunny smile, and Yuuri’s first instinct is to be floored, gaping at Victor.

Victor who smiles, effusive. "That puts us on the same boat, then, doesn’t it?"

Yuuri opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. 

"Fair enough?" Victor says, closing the book.

Yuuri manages a nod, once, before he even processes the question. Victor smells good, a distinct cologne from the few times Yuuri has been close enough to notice, and it’s suddenly too noticeable, dizzying above the thoughts all refusing acknowledgment in Yuuri’s head. "Sure," he says, not quite aware of the cognitive process that led to the one syllable.

Victor’s beam is automatic. "You know," he says. "You’re very cute when you blush like that, Yuuri."

It’s too loud, and Yuuri knows Yuuko heard that, too, and it doesn’t help his cause, his ears growing warmer as he finally finds it in him to shoulder past Victor, who just follows, oblivious and perfectly happy as he checks out the book that Yuuri had dropped without explaining why.

Victor’s the sort of person that defies explanation, Yuuri has always known, but being confronted with that from this up close is a whole other story altogether. 

Victor shouldn’t be _here_ , in Hasetsu—he should be in places unheard of, should be writing in coffee shops Yuuri will never visit and making phone calls to people that not even the everyday writer should be acquainted with. He shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be reachable, shouldn’t be attainable. 

He should be out of reach, not following after Yuuri all the way back to Yu-topia, whining about being hungry and Yuuri walking too fast and Makkachin already having abandoned him for a new favorite human. He should be someone that’s safe to admire, because it’s guaranteed it will always be from a distance.

Instead, he smiles at Yuuri’s mother when they arrive, echoes ‘ _I’m home!’_ in Japanese right after Yuuri, pokes his head in the kitchen like he has every right to do so out of curiosity and familiarity and everything else Yuuri hasn’t allowed himself to feel since he got here. Instead, he sits beside Yuuri at dinner and gushes about _katsudon_ in a way that makes Yuuri feels secretly warm and pleased and validated to name it as his favorite food, and to know that no one beats his family’s _katsudon_.

Instead, Victor turns Yuuri’s world upside down not from afar but from within it, already waiting there after Yuuri’s impromptu decision, slotting himself against a space Yuuri didn’t think he’d have to revisit without really thinking it through first.

Instead, Victor has Yuuri snuggling under the covers in his childhood bedroom, finally cleaned out of storage boxes, replaying _That puts us on the same boat, then, doesn’t it?_ in his head. He has Yuuri putting hands to his face and examining the butterflies in his stomach that’s been there since yesterday and realizing:

_Oh. I’m happy that Victor’s here_. 

 

 


	2. anybody have a map?

The dreams start a week after Yuuri arrives in Hasetsu.

They start familiar the first couple of nights—dreaming of himself right before a performance, clammy hands and heartbeat pounding in his head, typical of weeks leading up to big performances—but it had escalated in the nights that followed, leaving Yuuri waking up in cold sweat, jolted awake by his own pounding heart.

The third night, he’d dreamt of opening his bedroom door, only to find a grand piano on a stage waiting for him instead of the hallway.

The nights after that, he’d dreamt of being chased down the stairs of his freshman residence hall—no clue who’s chasing him, no clue what he’s running away from, just that he is.

His legs feel shaky when he wakes up, his body too tense and his mind too overwhelmed to go back to sleep, so he’d taken to running, leaving before the sun is even up and taking the same path Nishigori used to run in high school. It doesn’t get the dreams out of his head, exactly, but it empties his mind, leaves nothing but the burn in his legs and his mother's voice in his head saying that baths are always better when there’s more of the body to soothe.

He usually returns to Yu-topia just in time for the sunrise and for the rest of the inn to wake up, and the routine works; his presence isn’t one that he’d like broadcasted to the resort, to the town, if only to avoid the kind of guilt this attention always triggers. Making nice with the guests—double their usual size now that the festival is approaching—is not particularly high in Yuuri’s list of priorities, and it will never be, so he keeps to the quiet corners of the house, doesn’t go out to the main area if more than one table is occupied, uses hot springs really early in the morning or really late in the evening to beat the post-dinnertime group.

The routine works, because avoidant routines work best, except Victor has a routine of his own, and it involves a lot of Yuuri.

Yuuri has heard rumors of Victor being a perfectionist—deadlines always met, minimal typos by the time the manuscript gets to the editing team, research folders apparently arranged into colored tabs and highlighted during his research trips—but he hadn’t expected that perfectionism to permeate even Victor’s daily life.

Victor wakes up at roughly the same time every day, a half hour off the mark at most if he’d been drinking hard the night before. Even then, he’s not deterred from his morning routine, bleary and wet-eyed as he walks out of his room around the same time Yuuri comes back from his run, but fresh-faced and smiling by the time he gets out of the hot springs and ready for breakfast, dressed in clothes too expensive to be worn as housewear and always smelling like he’s going to a New Year’s Eve party instead of walking aimlessly around a _ryokan_.

He makes it difficult for Yuuri _not_ to notice the systematic method to the entire thing, especially when he’s dragged into it; he yawns a charming _good morning_ every time, like he’s come to expect Yuuri to be standing at the end of the hallway as he comes out of his room, and like they’ve struck a deal over it, washing at the same time before dipping into the springs together, empty save for them because everyone else is far more used to taking their baths at night.

But the concept of sharing something, anything, with Victor Nikiforov is too much, even after a week, so Yuuri doesn’t think about it, lets himself pretend it’s all coincidence.

It probably is, at the end of the day.

Yuuri can be irrational about Victor, hopeful and idealistic, after all, but he’s not a _fool._

It’s still a curious thing, though, getting first row seats to Victor’s daily routine, and it’s an experience each time, sitting in the _onsen_ with him and watching him slowly come more awake. It’s one thing to see Victor _naked_ , and to feel his own body flush in—in what, really, he doesn’t know—but that’s something familiar, everyday, not something to bat an eye at after years of growing up in Yu-topia, even though it _is_ Victor Nikiforov, who Yuuri refuses to discuss under the glint in his sister’s eyes.

It’s another thing, however, to see Victor’s journey to wakefulness, to more stable self-awareness. It’s almost child-like, how visible the process is, Victor starting off drowsy enough to just be murmuring words of idle content but chattering away by the end of it, excited about everything from the statue watching over them to how long the inn has been in Yuuri’s family.

It’s an odd curiosity to be seen on an adult man, the wonder so reminiscent of Minako’s pre-school students. As odd as how aware Yuuri has become of the change that happens in Victor as soon as he becomes conscious of onlookers, of an audience consisting of more than just Yuuri. It’s nothing _big_ , nothing that should be surprising, but it’s equally naked in its own way, a personal process that’s bare in ways detached from the physical kind, and something Yuuri doesn’t feel like he should be watching.

His younger self _would_ be rejoicing—his inner younger self _is_ rejoicing—but even that’s gotten strange, the sort of entitlement he used to feel about Victor’s life by virtue of other people feeling the same way. It’s starting to feel wrong now, overstepping a boundary he knows has always been there, just never been as defined as it is now that they’re living just rooms away from each other and Yuuri has to constantly be confronted with Victor functioning like a human being.

It’s not exclusive to mornings, either.

While his dreams of being chased are something he can, in turn, run away from, Victor is an issue that Yuuri can’t avoid. He’s there, all the time, asking questions and poking his head into the kitchen and intently staring at the TV alongside all the other guests despite not understanding most of the drama. He pours himself a little too much _sake_ in one go and laughs sheepishly when it spills over, drags Yuuri over to the newspaper clippings and has him explain each one like the point of the article isn’t to describe what happened to begin with.

Victor is a hurricane of a human being, the kind of thing no one can look away from because it’s a fascinating disaster waiting to happen, a tower of porcelain plates on the verge of teetering over and shattering against the floor—until it doesn’t, stays right where it is, righting itself without help, seamless and perfect and somehow functioning within that messy sphere of contradictions.

A lot of things about Victor can be excused by simply pointing out it’s him, and Victor seems to be aware of this, gracious about his own existence, but never moving past a palpable sense of patience and charm that never fails to woo. He’s a balancing act with its own grace, and Yuuri hates that he’s as captivated by it as his younger self was, and as Yuuri’s own family is, even though Mari tries to hide behind grimaces whenever their mother addresses Victor as Vicchan.

Victor has won Hasetsu over in two weeks, has gotten everyone involved in his daily life the way Yuuri never has after years of growing up here, and it settles in uncomfortably, that Victor can get people to adore him in seconds, that his patience for socializing knows no limits, whereas Yuuri is forced to tiptoe around his own childhood home.

It’s a reminder of a world of differences that Yuuri has never wanted to notice—but Victor, for reasons Yuuri has tried to reason through to no avail, is determined to bridge that gap.

Like now, for example.

"Yuuri," Victor says, hands lax around the steering wheel even as they zoom past with what Yuuri knows is a bit above the speed limit. "What’s the Hasetsu Kunchi?"

"I—" Yuuri says, hands tight around the map he has open in front of him. "It’s a festival—um, _turn_ over at the—"

Victor nods, taking the sharp turn with the aggression of a street racer. "I know it’s a festival. How does it work?"

"It’s not a machine," Yuuri mumbles, lowering the map as the port comes into view—and with it, their destination. "It goes on for three days every year. November 2, 3 and 4."

There are two days left in October, but preparations are already in full hustle, their neighborhood having taken over Yu-topia and Mari the kind of frazzled she only ever got during testing periods back in high school. Their parents are as good at handling pressure as always, something Yuuri definitely did _not_ get from them, sending anyone available on chores and errands with the calm serenity of a couple that’s been doing this for years.

Yuuri happens to be one of those available people, alongside Victor who, by virtue of wanting to do anything that he has yet to do, is more than ready to make himself accessible for these errands. Yuuri’s family had waved him off the first few days, unwilling to let a guest do work, but Victor’s enthusiasm proves itself once again as a force to be reckoned with.

As a result, he’d been sent to drive over to Yobuko morning market, Yuuri in tow, with a list of vegetables and seafood to buy—which Victor seems excited about, as if buying fresh fish is somewhere in his bucket list.

It wouldn't be surprising if it was.

"What usually happens in this festival?"

Yuuri folds the map and opens the dashboard drawer, so full of a whole bunch of flyers no one actually wants to keep that it takes effort to close. "The floats— _hikiyama_ —are the highlight, I guess, and we basically just, uh, take them through the city. Fourteen of them."

Victor hums, following the line of cars parked slightly away from the boats. "And?"

"And," Yuuri says, frowning, "there’s food and—and festival stuff."

"Interesting," Victor says, and he sounds like he means it. He always sounds like he means what he says, and Yuuri has yet to be able to discern the difference. "This happens every year?"

Sometimes, when he asks questions like this, though, it sounds less like a overexcited tourist and more like an interviewer, a researcher, aware of the things he wants to know, curious about things he wants to understand. Yuuri has at least learned not to pry, just as he’s learned that Victor will, inevitably, answer with, "Just a curious tourist, Yuuri~"

"Yeah," Yuuri says out loud. "Every year."

He’d still been in high school the last time he was in Hasetsu for the festival, the September school year start whisking him off to New York way before November. His memories of that last time are blurry past the crowds, the red body of the lion float, the cool breeze of a winter yet to arrive. He finds that that’s what most of his memories of Hasetsu are like—snippets, more feeling than they are real images in his head—and it’s not a pleasant realization to be making when his family’s inn feels enough of a liminal space to begin with, not quite somewhere he belongs to anymore.

"Yuuri?"

Yuuri stops, belatedly realizing that Victor had found a parking space. His eyes are expectant, keeping them on Yuuri even as he kills the engine. "Did you hear what I said?"

Yuuri blinks up at him. "I—Sorry, did you—I didn’t hear—"

Victor’s smile probably isn’t meant that way, but Yuuri feels sorry all the same, a small twinge of guilt. But before he can apologize again, Victor’s already opening the door, completely comfortable in acting like the borrowed car is his and his alone.

He pokes his head back in after stepping out, tapping a knuckles against the top of the car and beaming at him. "Let’s go, let's go, let's go, Yuuri~"

"I know," Yuuri mutters, wrenching his own door open. "Why are you in such a hurry?"

He’s met with Victor’s wide smile as he closes it, eager and unrepentant. "We’re in Yobuko!"

"We’re still in the same city," Yuuri points out. "It got merged with Hasetsu some time ago. Yobuko’s just—the port now, and this area is called Asaichi-dori…." He trails off, flushing. "I mean—"

"Oh, no, don’t stop." Victor’s smile only widens, locking the door. "You’re such a wonderful tour guide, Yuuri."

"I’m going back," Yuuri says automatically.

"Don’t be like that," Victor returns, cheery as he spins the keys around his finger. "You promised I’ll be trying out the best squid of my life today."

"I—" Yuuri starts, but Victor’s already walking away, calling Yuuri’s name sprightly over his shoulder.

Yuuri waits for his cheeks to cool before he follows, allowing himself a sigh.

 

 

 

 

 

Growing up, Yuuri had never been much use for house work—Minako-sensei had always been adamant about Yuuri never carrying heavy things, or his hands never being around frying oil and boiling water, all of which demands that Yuuri’s mother was more than happy to remember so long as it’s her Minako-senpai being stern about it. It had sounded excessive to him, personally, as a child still learning the importance of a pianist’s hands, but now seems second nature after going to school with people who had worn gloves all year round and gone as far as to have their hands insured.

He’s not oblivious to the fact that he might as well be useless to the inn like that—he’s not like his sister, who, for as long as Yuuri can remember, has done everything from cooking to heavy lifting to taking over the dishwashing. Yuuri had been left with things like sweeping and folding towels and getting groceries and airing out the futons, which, in hindsight, had instilled in him an instinctive guilt when it came to his family. While Mari had always been diligent about the _ryokan_ , Yuuri felt more like a less glorified boarder than anything else; he didn’t have anything to contribute that matched the amount of money his parents spent on piano lessons and commute money and things like suits for recitals, and it nags at him, more so now than it already had before.

So it’s extra frustrating, if a little irrational, that he can’t even carry out this one errand properly.

"We can just ask someone," Victor says, shameless as he takes photos of the stalls with Yuuri’s phone. He keeps attracting looks, standing out within the crowd with silvery hair and a coat too fancy for a port market. "What are we looking for?"

"I don’t know," Yuuri mutters, scanning the sellers around them for the store detailed by his mother’s handwriting on the list he’s been given. "I don’t _know_ what we’re looking for."

It takes him three long beats to realize that Victor has bent over him, his head right beside Yuuri’s as he leans over from behind to look at the list. Yuuri lets out a undignified squeak before stepping away, gathering looks and almost crumpling the paper in the process.

Victor pouts at him. "I wanted to see."

"You can’t even read it," Yuuri says, relieved that his voice doesn’t come out shaky.

"Fair," Victor agrees. "But if you don’t know what we’re looking for—"

"I do—"

"Yuuri," Victor says, and Yuuri’s startled to find an strange softness in the smile he’s given, the same one Victor had given him in the car earlier. "You just said—"

Yuuri looks around them—at the elderly stall keepers raising their voices above each other, the stubborn women arguing about negotiated prices, the children running around with squid candy. Sighing, he says; "I don’t want to have to ask someone."

"Not even your sister?" Victor points out, holding up Yuuri’s phone. "Or your parents?"

Yuuri shakes his head. "Why would I—"

"Maybe," Victor says, voice nudging, "because they wrote the list. They are best equipped to answer your question, yes?"

At this, he holds out Yuuri’s phone, wiggling the end pointedly.

It’s jarring in its own way to be subtly scolded by Victor Nikiforov, but Yuuri takes it, careful not to let their hands touch. Victor steps away, courteous as he approaches a nearby stall to give Yuuri space to call in quiet—space that’s not really available, in a seafood market.

Mari answers within three rings. "Lost?"

"No," Yuuri mumbles. He pauses. "Kinda."

"Shoot," Mari says, taking a second for what sounds like a drag from a cigarette.

"It’s just—" Yuuri swallows, looking down at the list one more time. He takes a deep breath. "Mom wants me to get squid—but _everyone_ sells squid around here, and she wants some from this _super_ specific place and I—"

"Yellow awning with little blue wiggles on them," Mari says, automatic. "Not wiggles—uh, waves? They’re sorta like Old Man Nozaki’s store—remember that?—only yellow. Am I making sense?"

Victor had wandered off five stalls away, lured in by squid dumplings, which he holds up happily when he sees Yuuri staring. Yuuri looks away as soon Victor puts the dumpling in his mouth, gaze sliding to the stall across—which has a yellow roof with blue wavy lines running across the front.

"Oh," he says, into the phone. "I—I think I see it."

"Really?" Mari sounds genuinely surprised. "Okay then—I’m glad."

"Yeah," Yuuri says, all of a sudden awkward. "Sorry for calling out of nowhere, I just had a question—"

" _Please_." Mari scoffs. "It’s like a two-minute call, Yuuri. You needed help. I know you might have missed the memo, but there’s no rule saying you can’t call."

Yuuri doesn’t know for sure what he’s being scolded for, this time, but he nods, taking a few moments to realize his sister can’t see him. "I—Thanks for answering."

He thinks Mari sighs. "No problem. You and your celebrity crush get home safe, yeah?"

"He’s not—" Yuuri says, too loud. He clears his throat. "Don’t make it weird."

"You made it weird the moment you started obsessing over an _author,_ " Mari points out, and there is, now, what sounds like a smile in her voice. "But whatever."

"Don’t—" Yuuri starts to protest, but he cuts himself off as soon as he recognizes the beginning of a whine in his voice. " _Mari-nee-chan_."

"Don’t what? Don’t tease? That’s what older sisters are for," Mari says, with another scoff. "I’ve got five years to catch up on. See ya."

"I—Yeah," Yuuri says, a beat late, but finds that he can’t even be petulant, when Mari hangs up.

It occurs to him, another beat later, that this is the first time he’s called his sister in years, the first time it hasn’t been over Skype with the rest of their family, playing catch-up on designated weekends and holidays.

Strange, when that’s all he’d wanted to do, his first few months abroad—it was his sister he missed most often, and most palpably, wishing he could come home to her and complain about how piano practice was that day like he used to, could whine at her until she made _katsudon_ for him. But that had felt like a privilege he hadn’t earned yet, that first year at Juilliard; it felt like too much of an undeserved luxury to call and complain or talk about homesickness and regrets when it had cost so much to get him to New York to begin with, when it _had_ been costing so much from when Yuuri was much younger.

He feels a little dazed as he walks over to where Victor is, having some sort of non-verbal conversation with the old lady working the stall, a plastic bag full of packaged squid dumplings already in one hand while he pokes around the ones out for sampling.

"There he is," Victor says, just about brimming with satisfaction as he looks up to see Yuuri. It makes the way his eyebrows immediately scrunch up much more visible than it should have been. "Did you find out where?"

Too visible for Yuuri to convince himself he’d imagined it. "Um," he says. "Yeah. Yeah, I did."

"Did something happen?" Victor’s voice is always mild when they’re out in public, a practiced sweetness. It’s almost impressive to note that this doesn’t waver, even when his eyes turn to Yuuri with a kind of concern that doesn’t match what he’s saying.

"No," Yuuri says, biting back an instinctive _it’s none of your business_. "No, it’s—it’s fine. It was just weird. Being on the phone with my sister."

This last part, he doesn’t mean to say, and the look Victor gives him for it is reason enough to want to take it back. Before he could, though, Victor says; "Ah."

Yuuri blinks at him. When Victor doesn’t say anything else, he repeats, confused; "‘Ah’?"

He’d just opened his mouth when Victor feeds him a shrimp dumpling, retracting his fingers too soon and forcing Yuuri’s teeth to clamp down on the dumpling before it falls. He doesn’t choke on it, miraculously, but he goes through a cycle of different emotions—ranging from embarrassment to shock—before he settles for staring up at Victor, eyes wide and mouth only not open in disbelief because it’s being used to chew.

Victor’s smile is beatific, and so utterly impenitent that it has Yuuri frowning up at him instead, mildly disgruntled and valiantly fighting away the warmth flooding the tip of his ears.

"I’m sorry, Yuuri," Victor says, shameless in how much he clearly doesn’t mean it. "I just had to make you try—"

"I grew up here," Yuuri cuts in, around a mouthful of dumpling. "The city mascot is literally a squid."

"Well," Victor says, practically buzzing with glee as he accepts another dumpling from the shop lady. "I can’t imagine why you’d ever want to leave."

"I—" Yuuri says, taking a moment to swallow—and _god_ , he’s forgotten how good fresh seafood is from here. "That’s—a good question."

It’s obviously not the answer Victor’s expecting, because that gets Yuuri a blatantly surprised look. But all Victor does is pick up another dumpling and move it towards Yuuri, who takes an immediate step back.

And who is helpless against the warmth in his cheeks this time. "Victor, _stop_ , honestly—"

"Oh," Victor says, waving the dumpling around. "You finally did it!"

"Did—" Yuuri hesitates, suspicious. "Did what?"

"Say my name," Victor says, way too somber. "This is the first time you called me by name, Yuuri, do you know that? It wounds me that it took you this long."

"It’s not—" Yuuri wants to claim, but he looks back at the last week and can’t think of an instance that proves otherwise, mostly because that is not the sort of thing anyone pays attention to. It’s such a bizarre thing for Victor to notice, but Yuuri knows that this, too, is just something excused with Victor being Victor; it’s his _job_ to fixate on the small things.

It doesn’t make it any less weird, either, but he really doesn’t have a defense for it.

Victor wiggles the dumpling again. "Last one, I promise."

Yuuri grits his teeth. "Can’t I feed it to _myself?_ "

Victor blinks at him. "Why would you when I’m here?"

Yuuri sighs, looking longingly at the stall with the yellow roofing, before he opens his mouth, reluctant. Victor makes some sort of embarrassing noise before he feeds it to Yuuri, who bites down on it before taking another step away for good measure, eyeing Victor like he’d poisoned the thing.

Victor looks unbelievably pleased with himself, like _he_ ’s the one that’s been fed, and it’s a foreign thing, to know that Yuuri’s the one that has him looking like a child rewarded with candy. It’s never predictable, what pleases Victor, just that almost anything under the sun has the potential to excite him, and it strikes Yuuri as odd for someone who lives a life far from sheltered.

He chews on his second dumpling a bit too contemplatively, and he turns away when Victor starts looking like he’s about to try and ask if something’s wrong again.

"Pay the owner," Yuuri reminds him, trying to be stern and failing when he catches Victor giving the old lady a few more bills on purpose and cooing sweetly at her. He walks away before Victor sees him staring again, rubbing his own thumb against his cheek to somehow will the warmth away.

This time, it’s Victor that follows after Yuuri.

 

 

 

 

 

The next time Yuuri dreams, he’s running down a hallway, chased by some invisible idea that his brain refuses to acknowledge. When he turns a corner, Victor’s standing at the end of that hallway, and he looks up, smiling, waving Yuuri over.

So Yuuri runs, body weary, only he doesn’t seem to be moving forward at all—the hallway grows endless, Yuuri stuck and Victor as unreachable as he always was.

He wakes up with a rapid heartbeat and no motivation to go running at all, not when late autumn has the sun hiding for a little longer, and the neighborhood lazy in its waking, even during a busy period.

Instead, he ends up making the trek across the bridge over the river, empty save for a couple of fishermen on an early start to the weekend. It’s peaceful, for the most part, except the quiet snakes its way into Yuuri’s bones, exhausted from running he didn’t actually do, and curls up in his chest, where it sits stubbornly as he climbs the outside steps to the top floor of Minako’s building.

Minako-sensei finds him crouched outside her studio’s front door, almost an hour later.

"You have a key, don’t you," she says, by way of greeting. "Did you lose it?"

"No," Yuuri says, shivering in a coat suddenly too thin for the end of October. "I just—I didn’t think—"

"That you’d be welcome? Spare me," Minako tells him, stern, unlocking the door for both of them. "If I’d changed the lock, I would have told you. Now get in here."

"I didn’t mean to come without warning," Yuuri says quietly, toeing off his shoes.

"You’ve been coming without warning before you were even taller than the piano bench." Minako’s eyes are sharp as she watches Yuuri. It’s something he’s long since gotten used to, the perpetually critical gaze as much a part of his life as his mother’s _katsudon_ and his father’s unfortunate drunken tendencies. "Nothing’s changed. It’s too late to be sorry."

Yuuri means to reply, but whatever words he’d been about to say dies on his tongue as he watches Minako pour him a glass of milk, reflex from all the times he’d come here directly from school, fingertips tingly and hands aching to touch the keys. She doesn’t seem to realize what she’s doing until Yuuri actually takes the glass from her, and then she sighs, plopping down on one of the seats in the sitting area.

Yuuri takes a while before sitting down across from her.

"Yuuri," she says, eyes still narrowed. "You _know_ nothing’s changed, right?"

"Yeah," Yuuri says. "I—No."

"Yuuri." Minako sighs, watching Yuuri squirm in his seat. Eyes that know him too well, and a steady gaze that’s always been watching over him, from nearby or from afar. "What’s wrong?"

"Why isn’t anyone saying anything?" Yuuri blurts out, because just like that, she’s no longer Minako-sensei. Just her, just a fourth familial figure in Yuuri’s life, a constant that he can’t lie to, even now. "I show up out of nowhere and it’s like—"

"Like you never left?" Minako finishes for him. "Is that really what it feels like?"

Once, stiff, Yuuri nods, folding his hands on his lap.

"What about you?" Minako says. "What does it feel like to be back?"

"Like—" Yuuri almost bites his own lip in a hurry to stop himself from answering. He takes a shallow breath, exhaling before continuing; "I don’t know. It’s been a while."

"Yeah?" Minako drums her fingers on top of one knee, crossed over the other, never looking away from Yuuri. "Why is that?"

Yuuri stares at her hand instead of her face. A pianist’s hands tell stories of their own, and it’s much easier to be confronted with Minako’s obvious, if incomprehensible, concern when he’s not reading it off her face instead. "Why is what?"

"Why did it take a while?" Minako says, and it’s rare enough to hear her so subdued that the question falls much more heavily on Yuuri than a yell would have. "Don’t—don’t get me wrong, Yuuri. No one’s upset with you for not coming home for five years. When we told you we’ll support you no matter what, we meant it. We still do. But there aren’t _conditions_ , you know, that would allow you or ban you from coming _home_. It’s not a conditional thing."

 _There’s no rule saying you can’t call_.

"I didn’t want to come home," Yuuri says, the words too coarse to be anything but honest, "without doing _something_ first."

Leave it to Minako-sensei to understand without him elaborating, and for the natural sternness of her face to crack as her expression softens. "Oh, Yuuri," she says, her voice the way it used to be, when she was too incoherent to do anything but hug Yuuri, strong and firm, after a successful performance.

Yuuri doesn’t get to hear what else she has to say, though, because the doorbell rings, startling them both. Yuuri drains the rest of his glass while Minako gets up heavily to answer the door, letting in a girl barely taller than the door knob, who lets out a shrill scream when she spots Yuuri.

"Oh my _god_ ," she says, pointing unabashedly. "It’s _Katsuki Yuuri_."

Behind her, Minako gives Yuuri a look that means he _has_ to shake hands with the girl, at least, so he does, putting his glass down to sheepishly take one of the girl’s hands between both of his own. The kid doesn’t really say anything else, just stares up at Yuuri so thoroughly that Yuuri feels a little perturbed that he hadn’t been prepared for an encounter like this today.

Minako shoos her off into a room after Yuuri carefully signs the girl’s beginner’s sheet compilation, watching him all the while.

"You’re as terrible with fans as always," she says, all business again,even if the tenderness around her face doesn’t quite leave. "I saw how you looked at her sheets. Have you played at all since you got here?"

"No," Yuuri says, lacing his hands together before they can twitch. "Play what?"

"You’ve been playing since you were _five,_ " Minako points out, but she’s already rummaging around one of the filing cabinets behind her. "You’re a professional pianist. I’m sure you’ll find something."

It isn’t _what_ he’s playing that’s the problem, though; he hadn’t wanted to approach the piano since he’d gotten here, for fear that it would feel as foreign as it did a week ago, unfamiliar, more a stranger than his longest friend, just like everything else in Hasetsu.

Mostly, he’s just afraid he’ll feel the way he did in Warsaw, for the International Chopin Competition, playing a nocturne with hands that didn’t seem to understand what it was doing.

He blinks, and realizes that Minako’s waving a booklet at him.

"Yuuko wants you to play at the wedding, right?" she says, as Yuuri takes it. Elgar’s _Liebesgruss_ , arranged for the piano. "And you haven’t even thought about what you’re going to play."

"I thought I would just—" Yuuri says, flipping idly through the booklet. "Play the wedding march, or—or something."

"The wedding march. Over and over again?" Minako raises an eyebrow. Yuuri flushes. "Yeah, I didn’t think so. If you’re trying to keep yourself distracted, then you might as well be productive another way. Or else—"

"Or else I’ll forget how to play, I know," Yuuri finishes, subdued. It’s something she’d told him all the time when he was young and occasionally averse to practicing, but now seems unnecessary, when playing the piano is so much a part of Yuuri that it makes him feel a little silly to have even thought of not touching the piano at all for the past week. "How did you know—"

"That you’re trying to distract yourself? You forget how well I know you." Minako’s already walking away, cracking her knuckles in a habit Yuuri would recognize anywhere. "Your room’s yours if you want it. Or else scram unless you wanna be signing more autographs. I have a couple more brats coming in a few hours."

Just before she closes the door to her own occupied classroom, the girl trying to peek out from behind her, Minako says; "And Yuuri?"

Yuuri tightens his hands around the booklet. "Yes?"

"Talk to someone about it," Minako says, jabbing a finger towards him. "It doesn’t have to be me. But for the love of god, talk to someone about it, whatever it is. _Vocalize_. You’re a musician for a reason. Use sounds. Running away from the piano has never worked for you before. Are we clear?"

Yuuri opens his mouth, but she doesn’t really wait for an answer, closing the door behind her before her student can do so much as wave at him again.

He’s left alone in the sitting area, standing with a piece he’s never tried playing before and wondering if he was ever that small and _young_ , when he was studying under Minako.

He sighs into the silence that greets his thoughts.

 

 

 

 

 

Yuuri starts piano because he refuses to go out with his peers.

It’s not quite the explicit explanation for what happened, but that is, in retrospect, what it was. Mari had a brief stint with piano when one of her favorite idols had expressed interest in fans that played it, and Yuuri had been dragged along. It wasn’t meant to be more than a one-time thing—Mari herself dropped classes and started prioritizing work at the inn when she entered high school—but it stuck.

He falls for the piano first, of how it responded to the lightest of his touches, of how wide it feels when he sits before it. Then he gets tangled up with Mozart and Dvorak, with Czerny and Lizst after, with Sakamoto Ryuichi much later. And by the time he’s seven and sitting down on a piano across from Yuuko, he’s already completely in love with how any room seems to fall into a complete hush at the lightest tinkle of a piano, and how music feels like an extra limb if he wears it the right way, learns it the way it wants to be learned.

He falls in love with the piano before the scratchy dress shirts and long commutes to Tokyo and Osaka and flights abroad even began, and by then, all of that is simply a part of it all, part and parcel with all the things he’d signed up when he was too young to really know anything but how the piano makes him feel: important, magical, capable and significant and _happy._

Years later and Victor would write a book about a traveler searching for a place to call home, inspired by his own travels from such a young age. Critics would call the novel poignant where Yuuri will see inspiration and motivation and longing to do the same as the protagonist, to do the same as Victor, technically, to pack up and follow the image he sees in his head. Which happened, at the time, to be Juilliard, to be New York, because his parents wanted him going somewhere after high school and Yuuri thought that if he wasn’t going to be useful to the inn, he might as well pursue his studies of music to as full a capacity as he can, even if it meant leaving.

Years later and Yuuri would be back here, where he’d started, sitting at the same upright, rehearsing a piece for the wedding of his first duet partner and wondering where all the time went.

This is how Victor finds him, knocking twice, staccato, before opening the door all the way.

Yuuri had heard the doorbell and assumed it was another one of the students, but Victor stands in the doorway as proof otherwise, holding a store plastic bag transparent enough to show the assortment of carton beverages inside.

"I bought these from the convenience store myself," he announces proudly.

"C-Congratulations?" Yuuri says, jerking his hands away from the keys so abruptly that he winces at the change in sound that produces. "I—what are you doing here?"

"The lovely Miss Yuuko told me I might find you here," Victor says, leaning against the open door and rooting through his drinks stash. "I went to the library and thought you might be there."

"You—" Just for something to do, Yuuri lifts a finger back to the piano and presses the nearest white key, which happens to be a very ominous second octave C. "You, um, went to the library to look for me?"

"Well, I had to return the book I borrowed last week," Victor says, smiling like Yuuri had just cracked a particularly childish joke. "And if I bumped into you, then that means it’s just my lucky day."

Someday Yuuri’s cheeks will learn not to warm when Victor says his lame lines like this, but that day doesn’t seem to be today. "You gotta stop saying things like this," he mumbles. "People will—people will misunderstand."

"What’s there to misunderstand—" Victor says, breaking off as he produces a small carton of chocolate milk and offers it to Yuuri. "Here you go. For your hard work."

Yuuri accepts it reluctantly, an act he soon regrets when Victor asks him to move over on the bench, closing the door behind him as he just about presses himself against Yuuri. "Victor, there’s a _chair_ right there—"

"But I need to see the master at work from up close," Victor says, cracking open a can of coffee. He peers at the sheet music in front of them, for the most part thankfully oblivious to the fact that Yuuri’s trying his best not to get up and move away. "Oh~ _Love’s Greeting_ , how lovely."

"Love—what?" Yuuri follows Victor’s gaze to where _Liebesgruss_ is written on the corner of the sheet. He frowns. "Do you—do you speak German, too?"

"Past the basics? Not at all." Victor taps a finger against the paper, where _Salut D’Amour_ is written as a subtitle. Yuuri tries not to look at his side profile instead. "I do, however, speak—"

"French," Yuuri says. "R-Right."

"Yuuri!" Victor turns to him, surprised. "Did you Google me?"

Yuuri has been Googling him for years. He squirms, sliding a bit farther down the bench. "No."

"That’s a shame, I’ve been Googling _you_ ," Victor says, really not the one to be talking about shame here as his elbow digs into Yuuri’s arm while he experimentally turns the page, cooing like he’s never seen musical notes before. "Multi-time winner of the PTNA Competition, debuted with the Kyushu Symphony Orchestra—"

Yuuri feels the blood drain out of his face, only to return in a warm flush. "Stop—"

"—playing Mozart, invited to play at Salle Cortot, performed at Suntory Hall with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, _all_ before you were barely in high school—"

"Victor—"

"—and _then_ —"

"Stop, stop, stop—" Yuuri says, ignoring his warm cheeks for once to physically cover Victor’s mouth with one hand, because apparently flapping at him is not enough to make him quit. "I—stop. Please."

Victor blinks above Yuuri’s hand on his mouth.

Yuuri flushes even warmer before retracting his hand, folding it back on his lap. "S-sorry."

"Do you not like talking about it?" Victor says. "There’s a lot to brag about."

That’s ironic, coming from a man who has even more accomplishments in his records. "I—Can we talk about something else?" Yuuri says, helpless, not quite processing the fact that Victor was looking _him_ up on the Internet. He has so many questions about this conversation, but he’s starting to resign himself into accepting that this is an unavoidable side effect of dealing with Victor. "Like, maybe, um, what you’re doing here?"

Victor blinks at Yuuri, taking a long sip from his canned coffee. "I was looking for you."

"Y-Yeah," Yuuri says, somehow tripping up over the one syllable. "I—Su—Sure. Why?"

"You weren’t there this morning when I woke up," Victor says, lowering his voice like he’s divulging a conspiracy theory. "And you _still_ weren’t there during breakfast. So, naturally, I would wonder."

"Naturally," Yuuri echoes, blank.

"Naturally," Victor agrees. He has really pretty eyes—Victor just has a pretty face, a fact that Yuuri’s no stranger to, but from this up close, his eyes are piercing, unreadable and searching and open and honest all at once, an amalgamation of all sorts of things that leaves Yuuri’s throat dry and has him looking away.

Which Victor seems to misinterpret. "Does it bother you, Yuuri?"

Yuuri goes back to idly pressing on keys, no rhyme nor rhythm to his choices. "Does what bother me?"

"That I looked up all these things about you?"

Yuuri frowns. "No? I mean—no, it’s just—" There are things he can say here, but he has more than enough self-preservation to know that _I’ve been wanting you to notice me for years_ is probably not the right way to go about it. "No. No, it doesn’t. You just—surprised me."

"Because you don’t like talking about it?"

"No," Yuuri repeats, hasty. "It’s not that—It’s just _weird_ , when people do that."

"Point out the things you’ve done?"

"I—" Yuuri shrugs, still not looking at Victor. "I guess. I don’t know. I don’t—it’s not that I mind talking about it, I think."

Just that it’s not really a good feeling, hearing about things like that and ending up feeling a knot of regrets and could-have-been’s in his stomach instead of pride.

There’s a hum. "Then I _can_ ask you about it?"

"Victor," Yuuri says, sighing. "Did you come all the way here to bug me about this?"

"Yes," Victor tells him. Then, after one more sip of his coffee, he adds, solemn; "I’ve been here for two weeks and yet the greatest mystery in this city remains to be you, Yuuri Katsuki."

Yuuri immediately regrets looking at Victor as he says this, because it makes it very difficult to look into Victor’s eyes and not put his heartbeat in jeopardy. He reminds himself that this is Victor being Victor, that Victor accepts things like this as a natural part of how he is and what he does to people, and that Yuuri’s heart should really calm down now, thanks, before he does another running-away number on Victor.

"You haven’t seen much, then," he manages.

"Surely not a fault of my own," Victor says, somehow leaning back on the bench without falling. "My tour guide seems more keen to avoid me than—"

"Okay, first of all," Yuuri says, disbelieving. "I didn’t agree to be an official tour guide with, like, itineraries and scheduled bus tours. Second, I’m _not_ avoiding you—"

Victor clicks his tongue, shaking his head, woeful. "You’re even avoiding my questions right now."

"Why," Yuuri says, long-suffering, "do you even want to know anything?"

Victor’s smile is conspiratorial. "I have an appetite for things that make me curious." 

"Literally," Yuuri mutters, if only to hide the sudden lump in his throat. He clears it off with a forced cough. "I—I make you curious?"

It feels like blasphemy, to say that out loud, even when a louder part of his head is trying to search which book of Victor’s has to have inspired that line. But Victor’s answering nod is honest, blinking his eyes at Yuuri like he’s been perfectly clear about this even when all he’s been is an absolute enigma that Yuuri refuses to acknowledge.

"I don’t get you," Yuuri mumbles, flipping back to the first page of the sheet music just for something to do. "I don’t get _anything_ you do."

"What you see is what you get, actually," Victor says, and Yuuri tries not to notice Victor’s stare turn contemplative. "Which is not something I can say for you."

Victor isn’t right, on both counts, because Yuuri _knows_ there’s a lot more facets to Victor than he likes to present in one go, and because Yuuri also knows he himself doesn’t require digging any deeper, if only because his own layers aren’t exactly things he can explain, only learn to work around.

"Fine," though, is what Yuuri ends up saying, giving a one-shouldered shrug that comes out more half-hearted than he really feels. "One question."

Victor beams, straightening, and Yuuri practically hears Victor’s own voice in his head going: _hook, line_ and _sinker_. The smile softens into a more muted one, though, when the question comes. "Are you not on good terms with the city?"

It’s an unexpected question, and for a few moments, Yuuri just blinks and blinks, caught off-guard. "I—With the city? Like, with the people of Hasetsu?"

"No, the place itself," Victor says. This time, it’s his turn to tinkle with the piano, hitting the same second octave C that Yuuri had pressed earlier. "You don’t seem to want to be here, but if that’s the case, you would have left by now, yes?"

Yuuri’s negligent for allowing himself to ever forget how observant Victor is, how observant he probably consciously makes himself be. There are always details that Victor notices, details that Yuuri himself doesn’t realize until Victor points it out to him—like Yuuri being too hesitant around him to say his name this past week, the avoidance, and this. "I don’t—How can I be on good or bad terms with a place?"

"Sometimes, you hate a place. Sometimes, you love a place," Victor says, matter-of-fact. "Or," he continues, eye contact so steady that not even Yuuri can look away, "sometimes, you don’t know how to feel about a place when you return to it and those initial feelings have changed."

Yuuri stares at Victor. Victor stares back at him.

"If you know the answer to your question," Yuuri says, quiet. "Why ask it?"

"I don’t want to assume things about you," Victor returns, just as quiet. The irony of them whispering in a sound-proofed room isn’t lost on him, though, because he cracks a smile. "Does it have something to do with you having been gone for five years?"

Yuuri sighs. "How do you even understand local gossip?"

"These are all info from your piano teacher," Victor says, ignoring Yuuri’s automatic frown at that. "I thought maybe you weren’t on good terms with your parents, but that’s not the case at all. They love you very much. So why stay away for five years?"

"That’s—That’s why." When Victor gets going, it’s hard to keep up without getting lost in his pace, and this is what happens now, Yuuri’s mind too busy catching up that it’s unable to process before replying, and the result is a bit too honest than Yuuri would like. And then it’s too late to take it all back, or to resist the look Victor gives him. "My parents—my family doesn’t really understand how—how being a professional musician works, but they’ve been—they’ve been really supportive—"

His parents, Mari-nee-chan, Minako-sensei, all anchors no matter where Yuuri goes, no matter what he decides.

So it’s even more disappointing, when he can’t even reciprocate with all the sacrifices each of them have made, with all the love they’ve given without ever asking for anything in return.

 _It’s not a conditional thing_ , Minako said, but it _is_ for Yuuri.

"Juilliard isn't cheap," Yuuri says. "New York isn't cheap. _None_ of that was cheap. So I—I thought that, if I came back, _when_ I came back, it would be with something to be—to be proud of. That when I called, they wouldn’t have to console me from across the world, and just—"

He cuts himself off and takes a deep breath. When he looks up, Victor’s still staring at him, hanging on every word the way he always does. "Just say congratulations, you know? That they're proud of me." 

He doesn’t expect an immediate reply from Victor, but it comes. "Juilliard isn't easy, either," he points out. "And yet."

Yuuri swallows, his hands finding each other back on his lap. "And yet what?"

"I think," Victor says, ever mild, "that you’ve already done more than one thing they can be proud of."

Yuuri bites down on his lip, hands tightening around each other. "Not enough," he says, and he’s not sure if he ends up saying it out loud. 

"I can list your entire repertoire right now, Yuuri," Victor says, his voice softening. "And I understand the high standards. But I don’t think you have to strive to perfectionism out of guilt."

Yuuri releases his bottom lip, but he doesn’t say anything, just looks down at his hands.

He expects Victor to say something, prod, but when he finally looks up, Victor’s just staring at him, face unreadable.

"What?"

"I didn’t think you would answer so honestly," Victor says. "You keep surprising me, Yuuri."

That’s Yuuri’s line, really. "Can I—" he asks, before he can stop himself, "Can I ask something back?"

Victor blinks, taken aback, but he nods within seconds. "Of course," he says. "We _are_ runaway confidantes, after all."

Yuuri almost doesn’t ask his question Almost. Somehow, he manages not to roll his eyes. "Why did you—why is your phone off?"

The satisfaction at surprising Victor with his question in return is fleeting, because Victor’s face turns somber for three whole seconds before he says; "I see."

"I mean—obviously, you don’t have to answer, it’s—it’s none of my business, but if it’s not a terrifying crime syndicate that wants to reach you," Yuuri says, half-serious. "Then who is it?"

"Close," Victor says, half-serious himself. "Very close. A three-man crime syndicate."

Yuuri frowns.

"My editor tells me I don’t make decisions for anyone but myself," Victor says. "And his ex-wife tells me that that’s both my best and worst trait. So now I have a very angry teenager on my tail as a consequence of those decisions."

"You have your phone turned off," Yuuri says, slow, "because you don’t want to deal with a teenager."

"A very angry teenager," Victor corrects. "It’s very important to me that I have my peace and quiet, you see."

Yuuri highly doubts that. He searches Victor’s face for signs that he’s being duped, but either he’s not, or Victor’s just that good at playing it up for the crowd, because there’s no signs of deceit, just solemn resignation.

"Okay," he pushes out. "Right."

"I’ll have to call at some point," Victor says. "But for now—for now, I’d really rather not."

Yuuri can’t argue with that, not when he sympathizes, not when he has his own phone call to make at some point.

Victor raises both eyebrows, and Yuuri realizes he’d said that out loud.

"Yuuri," Victor says. "Do you want to make a deal with me?"

It should be progress that he’s actually asking upright about an agreement now, but Yuuri’s still wary. "What?"

"I’ll make one phone call," Victor continues, magnanimous, "if you make one phone call."

Yuuri sputters. "It’s not—it’s not _that_ easy—I can’t just—"

"But it’s a tiny bit of motivation to know someone else is doing it with you, right?"

"It’s _not_ the same thing!" Yuuri just stares at Victor, awed into near speechlessness. "I’m avoiding the call for a _reason_."

"So am I," Victor says, punctuating it with a brief smile. "So am I, Yuuri. But we have to do it at some point, don’t you agree?"

When Yuuri exhales, it’s a weary sigh.

Victor nudges him. "We’re confidantes. Partners."

That’s practically a sealed _yes_ in Victor-world, and Yuuri doesn’t resist, looking up at the ceiling as Victor reaches past him to pick up the chocolate milk Yuuri had left untouched on the leftover space on the bench. When he looks back down, Victor had opened it, straw inserted and everything, offering it to Yuuri like it’s a diamond on a silver platter.

Yuuri takes the drink anyway, mumbling, "Thanks."

Victor beams at him, and whatever tension had been there dispels just like that, dispels as Victor plucks the booklet from the stand to rifle through it. "You should teach me."

Yuuri gapes, teeth scraping against his straw as he opens his mouth. "What?"

"I know a thing or two about Classical music from exposure, I would say," Victor says, closing the booklet to inspect the cover. "It’s— _oh_."

Yuuri keeps gaping. "Oh?"

"I suppose it makes sense that the title would be in German," Victor says, "considering his lover at the time was fluent in it. Oh, how romantic!"

"His—Elgar’s?" Yuuri frowns. "Why do you know this?"

"This song is an engagement present to Caroline Alice Roberts," Victor says, staring pensively at the cover as he reads the name off. "In turn, she presented him with a poem."

"Why do you know this?" Yuuri repeats, only for recognition of the name to dawn on him late. "Oh—the book that you returned today? You actually read the poems?"

"Of course," Victor chirps, putting the booklet back and leaving it open on the first page for Yuuri. "You did pick it out for me."

"I _didn’t_."

"You did, in a way." Victor smiles, the gesture almost louche. "If you won’t teach me, at least play for me."

Yuuri sighs, but he puts down the milk. "I’m not a personal CD player."

"You were practicing before I got here, though," Victor says, widening his smile. "Whatever you’ve got. Please?"

Yuuri hates how Victor does that, how even the smallest of expression can seem so intimate from him, and that he’s vulnerable to it, no matter how hard he tries to be unaffected. "Has anyone ever told you," he says, "that you’re a little spoiled?"

" _Never._ " Victor stares at Yuuri, affronted. "Don’t be cruel, Yuuri."

"I’m being honest," Yuuri points out.

"You should be honest more often," Victor says, with a serious nod. "Around me."

Yuuri turns to him, managing to initiate eye contact. "Because we’re confidantes?"

Victor’s beam is too sunny for indoors. "Exactly!"

Yuuri shakes his head. "I can’t believe you."

"That’s my line," Victor throws back at him, except he makes it sound charming and flustering.

Enough so that Yuuri has to clear his throat before he puts his hands on top of the keys, rolling his shoulders. He hasn’t played in front of anyone since the Chopin third stage, and there’s a familiar knot in his stomach as he stretches out his hands experimentally, finding them as shaky as they usually are.

It’s been much, much longer than that since he’d played for anyone directly, anyone that isn’t Celestino, maybe Phichit somewhere in the room with them. Learning to play while keeping the audience in the back of his mind is second nature now, but it’s another thing to be playing for someone so warm and real beside him.

When he sneaks a look at Victor, though, he’s staring not at Yuuri’s hands but at him, and when he catches Yuuri’s eyes, he smiles, of course he does, glowing with excitement for something he’s experiencing for the first time.

It’s enough, for Yuuri to shed all the other times he’d done this or that, and to focus instead on Victor, and the notes in front of him, and the prospect of playing this for two childhood friends getting married.

It’s enough, if only for now, to try an unfamiliar piece in front of Victor, who’s curious and passionate and achingly human about everything under the sun that he makes it easy to forget that not everything comes so easy and delightful. It’s enough, because all he has to do right now is play for Victor.

So he does.


	3. so big / so small

" _There_ he is."

Yuuri taps two full measures of _Salut D’Amour_ against the library desk before it occurs to him to look up—and by then Nishigori Takeshi already has an arm around him, tugging him in with a laugh. It’s such a sudden burst of physical contact that Yuuri can’t react, and he sits there without the grace to even look disgruntled while Nishigori greets the top of his head with something just short of a noogie.

Before throwing himself into the seat opposite Yuuri.

"You got kicked outta the house or something?"

"Uh—" Yuuri blinks. It’s a wonder it took this long for them to see each other again since Yuuri’s been back, but he blinks, and blinks again, and it doesn’t get any easier detaching this Nishigori from the one in his childhood memories. He looks every bit like he did when Yuuri left, except bigger, somehow. _More_. He’d expected Nishigori to look older, the way Yuuri _feels_ older, but Nishigori looks near perfectly the same, an unchanged relic from someone else’s past. "Yeah. Sort of."

Nishigori nods. "Sucks."

"Yeah," Yuuri repeats.

With mere days left until the festival, the inn is filled to every corner with guests—locals and tourists alike, with hardly any space to even walk around in the main area. Mari had found Yuuri this morning lost in thought and standing by the front door with his sheet music; she’d taken one look and said, _I can’t decide what’s worse_ : _you not having anything to do or this_ , before packing him off to get out of the way.

It’s a day off for Minako’s studio with a city-wide event looming so close, so Yuuri had ended up in Hasetsu Castle, seeking peace and getting a small lineup for the museum instead, most of whom were people also in town for the Hasetsu Kunchi.

Yuuri’s first thought had been Victor, that Victor should be in that queue, buzzing with infectious excitement—but Victor had excused himself with a smile after breakfast, Yuuri’s phone and Makkachin in tow, and was yet to reappear before Yuuri had left Yu-topia.

He would be lying if he said there wasn’t the early beginnings of concern sitting low in his stomach, but he kills that train of thought immediately.

He closes his sheet music booklet and clears his throat. "What are you—what are you doing—"

"Are you kicking me out of the local library?"

" _No_ ," Yuuri says. "I just—shouldn’t you be—"

"Helping with the floats? At the shrine?" Yuuko stops beside them with a cart full of returned books, half of her gaze concentrated on where each book goes and the other half set on glaring at Nishigori. "Yeah, he _should_ be."

"I’m taking a break," Nishigori points out.

Yuuko clears her throat, prim. "You’ve been taking a break since October."

Yuuri blinks between the two of them, wondering if he should intervene, or at least try to—but this is how they’ve always, always, always been, a natural exchange of words even when Yuuri at first couldn’t properly keep up with the witty banter and pun exchanges. They’d come from different parts of Yuuri’s life—Nishigori the same age and thereby always in the same grade, Yuuko a year older and technically a _senpai_ from Minako’s studio—but it might have been a natural result that the two of them would be engaged, would be married, a pair for as long as Yuuri has known them, constants in his life the way everything else on the island is.

"Is that for the wedding?" Nishigori says, oblivious to Yuuri’s sudden existential plight as he gestures at the booklet. "Pass it."

Yuuri does, wary as Yuuko comes closer to see, too.

He’d been spending the last couple of days holed up in Minako’s place, head full of notes, wrists and hands falling back to something familiar, knowable. It’s always its own mix of joy and frustration, starting a new piece, especially one different from what he’s currently used to playing, and _Salut D’Amour_ is no different, short and in some ways easier than most, but also harder in how much subtler it is than all the Chopin he’s been playing, soft and not quite as in the open.

Yuuko runs eyes through the whole thing, curious. "What does it mean?"

Yuuri follows her gaze to the title. "It’s, um, _Love’s Greeting_."

He hears his own answer in Victor’s voice, somehow, and that has him looking away from the piece, refusing to let the association cement.

"Oh," Yuuko says, exchanging a look with Nishigori. "I see. Any particular reason you chose this piece?"

The thing with people that have known him before he’s even solidified the kind of person he wants to be is that they know what exact buttons to push, how to word their words so particularly that they get the exact reaction they want—a flustered wave of his hand, an indignant squawk, a pout, or, in this case, a red face as the realization settles in, belated. 

" _Minako_ - _sensei_ chose it for me—"

"He’s blushing, he’s blushing," Nishigori says, grinning. "Are you thinking of someone?"

Yuuko gasps, raising both hands to either side of her face. "Oh no, is it—"

"Who?" Nishigori sits up straighter, eyes wide between Yuuko and Yuuri. "There _is_ someone?"

"There’s _no one_ ," Yuuri says, but it comes out weak, even though his head is more than a hundred percent sure about this answer. "I don't even—I don't _even."_

Love isn’t something Yuuri thinks about regularly—or at all, really, unless someone brings it up and he has to go through the process of not really understanding its nuances, nothing past the broad, vague idea of loving someone, something.

His experiences with love have all had to do with music, the feeling borrowed from its original composer, the idea planted voluntarily in his head so he can call upon it in performance. It isn’t his, because it’s not something he contemplates beyond the principle of it. It strikes him as such an easy word to say, an easy thing to evoke, and yet not at all.

 _Salut D’Amour_ is complicated precisely because Elgar’s feelings, when he wrote it, aren’t something Yuuri can borrow; it’s love that’s written between every note, every rise and dip of a short piece, but it’s personal, vulnerable, the way it feels watching Victor when Victor’s not quite aware of it, like Yuuri’s being privy to something he really isn’t supposed to be. Elgar’s piece is private, direct, made specifically with his wife in mind, their memories together and the future stretched out ahead of them.

Yuuri doesn’t have those memories, nor the capacity to look at his engaged friends and _understand_. Both of them have always been great at leaving space between them for Yuuri, at taking him into their life even when they first started dating, that nothing had really changed—the dynamic has rearranged itself, sure, but they’ve been a package with Yuuri even before crushes and loves were in the air, and the friendship has and always will come first. Yuuko’s direct words.

And Yuuri really wants to get this right, when Yuuko has made it clear they both want Yuuri there, playing for one special night.

It’s almost worse than concours and concerts.

"There’s no one," he repeats, reaching out to smoothen a flap on the second page of the booklet. "It’s just—it’s a nice wedding song."

"Wow," Nishigori says. "You sure sound enthusiastic."

Yuuri gives him a flat look at that, and Yuuko starts laughing—and for a moment, it’s the three of them outside Old Man Nozaki’s store all over again, Nishigori accidentally biting into Yuuri’s meat bun instead of the custard one Yuuko had bought for him.

It’s a nice thought, if bittersweet.

"That’s right, smile more," Yuuko suddenly says, poking Yuuri’s cheek. "Or else you’ll break Victor’s heart and intimidate him off back to his own home."

She’s joking, and Yuuri knows she is, so he doesn’t understand why his chest clenches without warning, sending him staring up at Yuuko with a look that melts the mischievousness right off her smile, turns it into something gentler.

"I’m kidding, Yuuri-kun." She puts a hand on top of his head, pats there twice. "Sorry. He’s very attached to you already."

Yuuri’s frown is instinctive. "Attached? To me?"

Yuuko nods, shrugging. "I mean, it’s you, so no one’s really surprised," she says, and the words don’t sound right to Yuuri. He stares at her, confused. "Except—except you, I guess? What’s that look for?"

"The entire town knows him by now," Nishigori adds, his knees restless against the library desk. "If not by name, then by face, at least. Some of those people that come from Fukuoka every year think you eloped with him and that’s why you’re back for this year’s festival."

" _What?_ " Yuuri doesn’t mean to, but he stands up, hands slamming down on the desk, scandalized. "They _what_?"

"That was an exaggeration," Nishigori says. "Sorta. Kinda. Not really. You _have_ been inseparable."

The idea of being inseparable with Victor makes Yuuri feel like he’s teetering on the edge of fainting, so he sits back down, pushing back his hair and reevaluating his entire life. "That’s because—that’s because I’m—he just wants someone to show him around, sometimes—"

"Okay, but you haven’t really done much of that, either," Yuuko says, cheerful. "I asked him and you haven’t even taken him to the beach, or Niji no Matsubara, or the _caves_ —"

"It’s almost winter," Yuuri points out, pressing a cheek against the wooden surface of the desk. He cradles his forehead against the crook of his arm, slumping over completely because Minako-sensei isn’t around to criticize his posture. "And everyone’s busy around here. You can barely go out anywhere."

"Then take him to Takashima," Nishigori says, ever an enabler. "Since you wanna get away from the mess here and everything. Kill two birds with one stone."

"You shouldn’t kill birds," Yuuri mumbles.

"I’m sure he’ll enjoy that," Yuuko says, ignoring him. "Not the bird killing. Takashima. Wouldn’t you, Victor?"

It takes Yuuri a beat to process that Yuuko had switched completely into English, and another one to sit up abruptly, hoping to high heaven that Yuuko’s messing with him—but she’s not, because Victor’s standing by the other end of the desk, fancy coat and thick scarf and pretty smile and hand raised in a wave.

Yuuri allows himself a second to send an internal frown his sister’s way, no doubt responsible for sending Victor here.

Victor—who just widens his smile, delighted. "Enjoy what?"

"Takishima is an island near Hasetsu Bay," Nishigori says, and he must have met Victor before, because he doesn’t bother with introductions now.

Yuuri would question that if he wasn’t so busy staring frozen at Victor himself.

"Since you two got kicked out of Yu-topia," Yuuko continues, smoothly picking up the thread of conversation, much more comfortable than her fiancé’s stilted explanation, "We thought you and Yuuri could enjoy some time in the village or something."

"Village? Island?" It’s nothing unpredictable, but Yuuri’s still floored when Victor beams, turning his bright, excited eyes to Yuuri, hands clasped together and expression so dazzling that Yuuri knows it’s not even a battle worth fighting.

He stands up without a word.

" _Yuuri—"_

"Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m getting up now, look at me go," Yuuri says, forcing a sigh out just so three pairs of eyes won’t have to notice how flustered he is to be watched as he folds his sheet music. Yuuko and Nishigori’s are especially interested, and Yuuri ignores them.

He turns to Victor instead, but eye contact with someone like Victor is hard, so he settles for the floor. "We’ll be going now," he says to the old wood panels.

Yuuko’s definitely giggling, and it’s Nishigori that says; "Have a safe trip. Feel free to stay there. We’ll be here slaving away for the festival."

Yuuko nudges him, and they laugh, and Yuuri can’t feel too bad about being teased, regardless of how awfully high schooler-esque it is of them to be doing so.

They’re all in their mid-20s at this point, and yet.

Yuuri’s aware he’s smiling as he shuffles Victor out the library, quick before he can extend his gracious goodbyes for far too long. Makkachin’s waiting for them right outside Hasetsu Castle, calm as ever while kids in the museum lineup point at him.

"Did you just leave him out here?" Yuuri says, bending over to rub behind Makkachin’s ear, smile still on his face. To the dog, he says; "Have you been waiting long?"

Makkachin responds with tail-wagging, which Yuuri takes to be agreement.

There’s a special feeling that comes with seeing dogs, he thinks; something warm and overwhelming right in his heart, and the urge to just throw his hands around Makkachin, as uncharacteristic as that would be for him. He used to want a dog, as a child, wanted something to cuddle close and sleep beside. His family isn’t touchy by nature, and while there was no shortage of love or affection, physical touch was always a conscious thing—a congratulatory hug, affectionate cheek-squeezing from Mari, or sometimes just entwined arms after a long day.

Comfort through physical things was something sought out voluntarily, and it was always a huge deal, when it becomes something unconscious, something craved.

There’s a click, and it takes Yuuri two blinks from Makkachin before he recognizes his own phone’s shutter sound.

He looks up, only to find Victor staring, hands around Yuuri’s phone.

"Um," Yuuri says.

They blink at each other, before speaking at the exact same time:

"I—"

"You—"

Yuuri bites down on his tongue, automatic. Victor pauses, too, smiling, but it’s him that ultimately ploughs on.

"My bad," he says, lowering the phone. He _does_ , for the most part, look apologetic. "I was too trigger-happy there."

Yuuri can’t pinpoint it, but there’s something in the way Victor’s staring that makes him want to look away, so he does, clearing his throat. "I, um—do you not want to go back and change first? We might be hiking up—um, a bit. If you want. It will get cold."

"I’m perfectly fine." There’s a smile in Victor’s voice, of course there is, and that coaxes Yuuri into looking up, in time to watch him gesture at his scarf in reassurance. Victor has his other hand outstretched towards Yuuri, though, moving his finger inwards in a _get up_ gesture. "Let’s go?"

Yuuri stares down at Makkachin, who just tilts his head in response.

So Yuuri sighs, takes Victor’s hand and tries not to pay too much attention to how easily his fingers curl around Yuuri’s, warm in the late autumn breeze and gone way too soon as Yuuri pulls back.

He slips the hand back into one pocket, his palm tingling.

 

 

 

 

 

They have to take a ferry to get to Takashima, which Yuuri would normally be wary about, with a technical tourist and his dog looking to him for guidance—but Victor’s a welcome distraction, pointing shamelessly at the island from a distance and saying things like; "It kind of looks like a pudding made out of greenery, no?"

He makes friends with about a third of the other passengers, mostly other tourists on their side of the ferry, and Yuuri tries to smile through most of it, and maybe not react to how Victor presses in close, a constant warmth throughout the entire ride, never drifting more than a forearm’s length away, and only ever to get a more decent angle for a picture.

Victor might as well be a co-owner of his phone at this point, but Yuuri doesn’t mind it so much—doesn’t mind it at all, really, if only because it feels oddly intimate, sharing something like that.

He waves that thought away at once.

It’s three in the afternoon when they get to Takashima, late enough in the day that there are more people getting onto their ferry on the way back to the mainland than there are getting off. Takashima is seventy percent hill and thirty percent garden, but it works, somehow, the peace and quiet in abrupt contrast to the lively chaos back in Yu-topia.

Victor ends up guiding them around every little garden plot, Yuuri and Makkachin following close behind. Not for the first time, it strikes Yuuri how multi-faceted the public Victor is; it feels like he’s meeting a different one each time they’re out somewhere, seeing a new part to Victor that wasn’t necessarily nowhere to be found before, just subtler, more subdued than another situation would be calling for.

It’s like dealing with a spinning prize wheel in one of those game shows, always a different face for a different situation, the wheel itself whirling around too fast to really make out what’s at its core. It doesn’t stop Yuuri from staring straight at Victor and trying to figure it out, though, like maybe if he stares at the middle of the wheel long and hard enough, his eyes will get used to the movement around it.

Most of the people coming to Takashima do so for the shrines, so they end up there, too, even if Yuuri highly doubts Victor is in any particular need of lottery luck. It’s still its own kind of amusing, to help Victor through the motions, his hands awkward at first but comfortable by the time they get to the nearby Inari shrine, buying fried tofu from a stall to bring as offerings.

The excitement is always there with Victor, the curiosity and genuine interest—it’s what people are charmed by, probably. Yuuri knows Victor’s capable of saying blunt things, has experienced it firsthand, but Victor’s grasp on social manners is also as solid as it can get, his natural charisma working in tandem with poise so learned it can easily be mistaken for innate, thoughtless. He’s a warm person to be around, magnetism boundless and energy irresistible, whether purposely muted or bordering on obnoxious.

Yuuri isn’t like that.

Celestino has told him more than once to pay attention to the kind of mood he exudes onstage, has even gotten him to watch Phichit for reference on more than one occasion. But for some people—Phichit, Victor—it comes intuitively, a natural consequence of them being them.

And with Victor, like it is with Phichit, it’s much less exhausting to just give in to their magnetic pull, to allow himself to be swept away by it, than to resist it.

"Yuuri!"

Yuuri blinks, twice, three times, before Victor comes to focus above him, smile triumphant. He’d left Makkachin with Yuuri, sitting on a sidewalk bench, and he waves two small brown bags around now, sitting down next to Yuuri before handing him one.

It’s a squid bun, still steaming and fresh from the stall, and Yuuri’s mumbled _thank you_ comes out surprised, almost.

Victor beams his _you’re welcome_ , the multiple exclamation points somehow sketched in the lines around his eyes.

Yuuri knows the type of tourist Victor is—the kind that defaults to buying things when he goes somewhere, meeting the locals while getting souvenirs at the same time. But then there’s also the part of Victor that’s hardly a tourist anymore; a newcomer, maybe, but he’s carving a place for himself in the island bit by bit.

Looking at the set of Victor’s shoulders, though, Yuuri can recognize that for all that he seems to do well enough in a small town, in a foreign country, Victor still looks lost, not so much about being around these people, but just in general, like he's trying to find a nook for himself and finding each one occupied instead, so that he’s forced to create one himself. 

Yuuri only sees it because it's the opposite of how he feels—the space is there, right where he'd left it, but it doesn't feel his anymore. It feels like something he's outgrown.

He bites down hard on his bun.

And regrets it at once, the dough too hot on his tongue.

Makkachin sits up by his feet, attentive to Yuuri’s sudden crisis.

He swallows it down without really tasting it, making a face, and he doesn’t immediately register the laughter until he turns to Victor and _sees_ it first, Victor’s mouth open in a small laugh. It’s more quiet huffs of amusement than actual, _actual_ laughter, the way Phichit and Celestino’s boom around the practice room, or the way his parents laugh until they’re tearing up.

It’s quick to die down to a smile—one that hurts to look at, almost, in how directly Victor turns it to Yuuri.

Victor makes it so, so hard, for Yuuri to convince himself that it’s not something exclusive to him.

"I like it here," Victor says, sudden. "It's quiet and warm. And it feels like time doesn't exist." 

It’s an unprecedented sentiment, and Yuuri doesn’t know how to reply past a nod.

Victor accepts it.

They sit in silence for a good five minutes, Yuuri not as good as he’d love to be at pretending not to notice how close Victor’s knee is to his.

And then; "Did you end up making that one phone call?"

"Not yet." Yuuri pauses. "Did you?"

Victor crooks a smile. "This morning." 

Yuuri’s sure that, whoever Victor needed to call, it was someone he didn’t want to talk to until he had to. But for Yuuri, it isn’t that he doesn’t want to talk to Celestino—it’s that he’s not quite ready to turn it into a conversation, into something he has to face and receive a response back that isn’t from his own head.

It’s hard to explain that _congratulations_ isn’t what he wants to hear, nor is _it’s okay_. It isn’t consolation he’s looking for, nor a congratulatory speech he doesn’t quite deserve.

And he’s been afraid, that that was what he was going to get.

"You can make it right now," Victor says. "Before we climb up."

There’s fear, and then there’s the kind that’s always there for Yuuri, underlying every emotion, and it’s never easy, to have to work around that. _Fear_ isn’t the right word, either, but a quiet thrum that churns at his chest and stomach.

It makes him restless, desperate to get out of it.

It still isn’t easy.

Yuuri sighs, and holds out his free hand, stuffing the rest of his bun into his mouth with the other.

Victor doesn’t even miss a beat before placing the phone in Yuuri’s hand.

He takes the empty bag from Yuuri’s hand, standing up, and makes a big show of walking over to what seems to be the farthest set of garbage bins. As if privy to the subtleties of phone call privacy, too, Makkachin follows.

Yuuri watches them go, takes a deep breath, and dials.

It has to be around 2 A.M. in New York, but Celestino picks up within five rings.

"Yuuri!" he says, so loud that Yuuri winces, bringing the phone away from his ear. When he listens in again, he readies himself for a lecture, but all he gets is; "How are you!"

"I’m—" Yuuri looks down and finds one free hand shaking. He turns it over and closes it around his knee, restless. "Good. Fine. I’m fine. I’m—"

"Good, good, you deserve the vacation!" Celestino’s intonation is familiar, a cadence that rings in Yuuri’s ears the way a piece does when he practices only with the sheet music. "But do not neglect—"

"I’m not!" Yuuri says, too fast. "I—I promise."

"I am joking," Celestino tells him, conspiratorial. "I know you cannot stray away from music for too long."

The pause after that is abrupt, and Yuuri exhales, exhales until there’s nothing more to squeeze out from his lungs, before he says; "But?"

"But," Celestino says, "I must wonder why you have strayed so far away from us this time."

Juilliard is as small as it is big, overwhelming in notion but a streamlined community at its core—and Celestino would never admit it, but he thinks of himself with Phichit and Yuuri as a unit within that, from tutoring Phichit’s years in the Pre-College Division to the first time he oversaw Yuuri’s audition. They all do, even if Yuuri and Celestino wince every time Phichit captions photos in Celestino’s private studio with "It’s good to be back home!" and tags selfies with them as #thefam.

 _If you stay at a place long enough_ , Phichit once told Yuuri, both of them stewing in the catharsis of having one of those nights where they’re both homesick and there’s no choice but to cry it all out over a tub of cookie dough ice cream, _you build a home for yourself there whether you want to or not._

For Celestino, it’s not something he voices past the fondness on his face in the background of Phichit and Yuuri’s photos together. For Yuuri, it’s more feeling than it is something as tangible as Phichit’s hashtags. But it shows, in how unthinkingly Celestino says ‘us’ this time, and how automatically Yuuri understands what he means.

"I’m sorry," Yuuri says, the syllables pushed out of him.

"I am not asking for an apology, Yuuri," Celestino says, patient, not unkind, never unkind. "I am asking what you need from us."

With Phichit, Yuuri never has to vocalize it. Phichit’s enough of a people person—perhaps too much of one—that he understands people’s feelings and needs and wants on some innate level, naturally attuned to emotions. It’s why their friendship works, maybe; they ground each other, and Phichit, before Yuuri has even noticed, has become a bridge of sorts to a world he’d previously thought himself separate from.

With Celestino, though, it’s harder to navigate conversations without Phichit around, without the help of that third point. When he’s alone with people like Celestino—people that are authority figures, mentor figures, even de facto parental figures, if Yuuri really wants to be honest—he has to second guess his own words, to give up trust in himself and hope that someone else can choose for him instead. To doubt because it’s easier giving in than vocalizing what he _does_ want, what he does need.

It’s unfair, really, that Celestino’s asking him this when he’d been prepared for a different conversation altogether.

"I don’t know," Yuuri says, as honest as he can make it.

Celestino’s sigh is restrained. "I do not want to keep making choices for you, Yuuri. You are very capable of making them yourself."

The implication is clear, and Yuuri’s hand re-tightens around his knee. "I placed last," he says, rehearsed words in his head translating toneless into reality. "That doesn’t sound very capable to me."

"Yuuri," Celestino says, all too somber. "You look in the wrong places. Someday, you will have to learn to trust yourself more."

Yuuri’s mouth opens involuntarily, but there aren’t any words to make their way out.

On the far end of the garden plot, Victor’s making his way back, except he’s walking in zigzags, clearly trying to delay his own return. Makkachin thinks they’re playing, following his owner with excited tail-wagging.

Something about the heavy weight in Yuuri’s chest dislodges.

"Oh my _god_ —Are you talking to Yuuri? Without me?"

Yuuri jumps, sure he’s misheard, but then there’s rustling in the background of the call, and weary murmuring under Celestino’s breath, before Phichit comes on the line. "Yuuri!"

"It’s two in the morning," Yuuri says, horrified. "What are you _doing_ —"

"Practice ran a bit late tonight," Phichit confides, and it’s so easy to imagine him on a bar stool in their kitchen, swinging his legs around while he tells Yuuri about his day. "Maybe it’s _fate_ that it did—because you called! I went to get us coffee and I was all like, _man_ , it was so much nicer when Yuuri went with me for things like this, and I _really_ miss you, so—"

He cuts himself off, probably because of a look from Celestino; it’s almost like Yuuri’s there with them, the same way it had felt in the library with Yuuko and Nishigori earlier.

It’s always unnerving, how vivid memories get after you’ve spent enough time around those people.

"What are you—what are you practicing for?" Yuuri says, hand finally loosening around his knee.

"Ex _cuse_ me?" Phichit sounds scandalized, and it’s never a good thing when he sounds like that. "Um? The Com-Con?"

"The—the what?"

"The Self-Composition Concert!" Phichit’s voice is equal parts indignation and excitement, a perfect foil to how Yuuri’s stomach drops with the realization that follows. "The Cliburn Foundation one? That you’re in, too?"

"That—" That’s news to Yuuri. "That _I’m_ in?"

"Yeah? Yuuri’s in it—right, Ciao Ciao?" Celestino must give some sort of affirmation, or maybe he doesn’t at all—it’s hard to tell with Phichit—because the next thing to come through the line is; "See, you are! You were fully there when he asked us if we were interested."

"But—" They know Yuuri is never fully cognizant of things in his life when practice is in full swing for him. They _know_. "But I’m _not_ interested."

Self-composition. Concert. Phichit’s probably joining because he’s graduating soon and he wants the exposure. Self-composition. _Concert_.

The memory is vague, but Phichit’s definitely not messing with him.

"Oh god," Yuuri says, feeble.

"Yup!" Phichit chirps. "I’m practicing my piece."

"I don’t _have_ a piece," Yuuri says, panicking now. His stomach just keeps hurtling down, a roller coaster where the builder wasn’t informed that roller coasters also go up. "I—"

"Yuuri." Phichit picks up on that, too, from halfway across the world. "Yes, you do. There’s that piece you were fooling around with after grad—"

"It's not ready," Yuuri says, mouth dry. And, because it’s Phichit; " _I’m_ not ready."

Phichit doesn’t answer, and for a few long seconds, it’s just incoherent murmuring in the background, Phichit’s occasional attempts at replying cut off before Yuuri can make out anything from that conversation.

Five steps away from Yuuri, Victor has his back to him, studying every leaf that’s falling from a nearby tree like each one deserves thorough observation. Makkachin, at least, is curiously watching Yuuri. 

"Yuuri?"

"Yeah," Yuuri says. "Still here."

"Ciao Ciao—" Phichit’s voice is gentle by nature, something not many people seem to notice underneath how bubbly he is as a whole. There’s a click in the background, a door being closed, and Yuuri knows Phichit must have left the practice room, standing alone in the hallway now in some semblance of a private conversation. "Ciao Ciao said you don’t have to do it. He said—you know how he is. He said you should do what you’re comfortable with. And if you’re not comfortable with this, then it’s fine. We’ll contact them." 

Yuuri swallows—tries to, but his throat is too dry to offer much help. Careful, he murmurs; "What do you think?"

"Me?" There’s never room for surprise in Phichit’s words. "Honestly?"

Yuuri nods at empty space. A nod Phichit can’t see, but a nod Yuuri likes to imagine he’s there to understand anyway. "Honestly."

"I think," Phichit says, willing as soon as he’s given permission to be frank, "that you need a push sometimes." 

He lowers his voice, more instinct than anything when he’d left Celestino alone in a soundproofed room. "And—I know that Ciao Ciao means well when he wants you to be comfortable, but you—" He pauses, words eluding him. "He’ll never force us to do things we don’t want to do. But doesn’t that tire you out?"

Victor turns back to peer at Yuuri now, and something about what he sees on his face must concern him, because he frowns. Yuuri looks away. 

"Me?"

"I think, Yuuri," Phichit says, "that sometimes you gotta step out and take another look at yourself and what you want to do—what you _can_ do. That’s all."

Without thinking, Yuuri says; "I don’t know where I want to go from here."

It’s too honest, too unthinking, but Yuuri doesn’t immediately realize it until he sees the way Victor turns to him; Yuuri had forgotten, that there were things too vulnerable to be said out loud. But there it is, vocalized, worded in front of his best friend, and worded in front of someone who chooses words for a living.

To Phichit’s credit, he doesn’t even need a beat to let that sink in. He never does. 

"That’s because it’s too much to ask yourself the question and find an answer," he says, matter-of-fact. "But that’s what you’re home for, isn’t it? To figure things out from scratch?"

Phichit makes things so simple, makes things so straightforward without diluting it. 

To other people, he’s bright sunshine, blinding—but to Yuuri, he’s calm morning rays of sunlight coming through the blinds, a warm touch pulling him from the daze of sleep. It’s more apparent now than anything, with how tenderly Phichit pronounces his words, always too understanding than Yuuri deserves. 

"Yuuri—it’s okay to want things. You’re not going to be crucified for going after what you want." 

Yuuri’s hand tightens around the phone, clammy. "But what if—"

"Whatever _what if_ you have—cross that bridge when it comes," Phichit says, and his voice is a song quieting down to an end, the last few notes of a nocturne. "Okay? Just like this—this concert. Think it over a little bit more, okay? The last day to drop out isn’t until, like, December. So promise me that you’ll at least think about it and give me a definite answer when you come home. Promise?"

_Come home_ , he says, the exact same way he’d pronounced home when he’d referred to Yuuri coming back to Hasetsu. Unlike the way Yuuri has forced himself not to distinguish, for fear that picking one would mean leaving the other. Phichit sees things so differently from how Yuuri sees them, sees them in shapes that Yuuri usually ignores. 

It’s strange, but it is, maybe, what makes them the way they are.

"Promise," Yuuri says. 

"Cool," Phichit returns. He sighs, and the pout in it is so audible that Yuuri has to smile. "I really miss you so much, Yuuri! It’s just not the same without you."

Phichit is so _vocal_ , too, so free with his words and still meaning each and every one of them. It’s taken Yuuri years to get used to it, and still, it takes him aback. 

"It will Christmas before you know it," he manages, looking up to finally make eye contact with Victor. 

The expression on his face is unreadable, but his smile is stretched into a small smile, a shadow of one. 

"Yeah," Phichit says. "Yeah, exactly. Time flies. Make the most out of your vacation."

"Kind of hard to do when you spend most of your time practicing," Yuuri tells him, letting the smile creep into his voice. "And playing tour guide."

That has Victor’s smile stretching into a wider one, more genuine, before he frowns, shaking his head like Yuuri has done him a most criminal wrong. 

"Tour guide? What—" Phichit breaks off, and Yuuri can’t help but wince as he hears Celestino’s voice, clearly stern even as his words don’t quite make it through the call. Phichit sounds like a kicked puppy by the time he gets back on the phone. "Ciao Ciao is—"

"I know," Yuuri says, smiling down at the ground. "I’ve taken up too much time from your practice."

"You can take up more," Phichit mourns. "Okay, I gotta go—and don’t think this conversation is done, _mister_ —"

"I know," Yuuri repeats. 

"Next time, _I’ll_ be calling you at two in the morning," Phichit says. He probably means it to be threatening, but any sort of emotion in Phichit’s voice is the opposite of dangerous. "Bye, Yuuri!"

Yuuri only manages to make out a _you don’t get to say bye to Yuuri, Ciao Ciao_ before the call drops with a click. 

He’s aware he’s still smiling as he takes the phone away from his ear, small but involuntary, and he has to reach up to physically wave the smile away, tugging at his own mouth as Victor finally comes over, done pretending he hadn’t been close enough to listen for at least the past five minutes.

"It went well?" 

"Y-Yeah," Yuuri says, instinctive, stretching out a hand to accept Makkachin’s head nudging at his palm. He searches himself and finds, however, that he means it—he feels a little ridiculous now, to have been so apprehensive about making the phone call, but it feels like something has cleared after talking to Celestino and Phichit, nothing different from the usual, for all that he’d been so scared. 

Equally instinctive, he adds; "Thank you." 

"Oh." The sound is surprised enough, unfiltered, that Yuuri chances a look away from Makkachin and up at Victor, who’s looking at Yuuri like he did earlier—like Yuuri’s as incomprehensible to him as Victor’s expression is to Yuuri, something in a language Victor doesn’t speak the way Victor is a musical piece with patterns and demands Yuuri haven’t learned. 

For a moment, they just stare at each other like that, this time unblinking.

And then Victor smiles, sunlit. "You’re welcome. I’m glad the call went well."

Yuuri finally blinks, averting his eyes to stare down at his lap. "Yeah, I—I am, too," he manages, and it strikes him as uncanny, how easy it is to be honest around Victor. Makkachin blinks back at Yuuri like he agrees. "Should we—should we head up now—"

"Ready when you are," Victor says, simple, like nothing else had even occurred to him.

Victor’s too gracious for his own good, probably, but for once, Yuuri doesn’t take a moment to marvel at it—just accepts it as he stands up, managing a smile of his own to reciprocate Victor’s. 

Interactions with people are complex, always, but Victor makes all of it easy, just by being him. 

Yuuri doesn’t have to overthink it at all, doesn’t have to feel bad about anything, as he leads all three of them out of the garden plot. 

 

 

 

 

 

"You live in _paradise_ , Yuuri," Victor says, awed.

Yuuri would come up with a response, if he wasn’t too busy shivering to really think of one.

The climb up the hill isn’t bad at all, and the path is well-marked, but it had taken them enough time that it’s sunset when they get to the peak, the temperature dropping as they go along.

The sky reminds Yuuri of freshly peeled tangerines—pale orange bleeding into something deeper, darker. Across the bay, Hasetsu’s lighting up, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, flickering into nightlife as the day gets ready to leave.

Victor has been surprisingly quiet on the way up, following after Yuuri with little complaint; he’s barely done anything at all, hasn’t even taken pictures, or asked for history lessons. He’d stared and stared and stared, eyes always focused whenever Yuuri looks over his shoulder to check on him, mind a million miles away from what Yuuri can even fathom.

But Yuuri stares, too, now that they’re at the top—stares at Victor’s side profile, stares at the way his eyes flicker as Hasetsu lights up in the distance.

Years of limited edition posters and _about the author_ hardcover photos had conditioned Yuuri into the passive knowledge that Victor’s attractive, that he’s beautiful, that the dip of his mouth is pretty, and the upturn of his eyes dignified. His smile is prepossessing, and the way he dresses bordering on stately. They’re facts, observations stripped of their subjectivity, because one would be a fool to look at Victor and not realize why everyone makes such a big deal of his charms.

It’s a package deal, looks and genuine charisma, and it was this that Yuuri has always had in mind; in high school, his sister would say things like "I bet Victor Nikiforov does this and that," or Minako-sensei would guilt-trip Yuuri into focusing on other things that aren’t piano by insisting that she’s sure Victor kept everything in his life within stubborn organization. It is this that Yuuri still has in mind, looking at Victor up close, something he still can’t really get used to—Victor has _presence_ , and he knows how to use it, in full control of the things he can exude physically as well as he can use his verbal talents.

He’s perfect, in that regard.

But, looking at the way Victor’s eyebrows furrow a little bit as he contemplates the distant Hasetsu more deeply, the way he squints just slightly at the ferry about to leave Takashima, Yuuri has to wonder why no one told him about how different is it altogether to see Victor like this.

Objective beauty might be a fact, but there’s something else about this Victor—this thoughtful Victor, expression uncontrolled—that’s so arresting it makes Yuuri’s chest hurt.

He doesn’t realize he’d been holding his breath until he lets it out to finally acknowledge what Victor said, albeit obviously belated. "It’s—it’s not a bad place to grow up in," he says, muted.

"Did you miss it terribly?" Victor says, eyes still glued across the bay. "When you first left?"

Yuuri pauses, following Victor’s gaze across the water and to the mainland. During the first few months abroad, this is how Hasetsu had felt like—accessible, near enough, close enough, but too distant to be reached, the distance separating him from it substantial enough that he can’t even pretend it’s not there.

"So much," he replies.

Beside him, ever perceptive, Makkachin nudges at his leg.

Memories of home became talismans, pieces to motivate Yuuri, ground him, drive him forward as the rest of the world slowly opened up. But homesickness eats away at someone who doesn’t confront it, who holds back on telling his mother how much he misses her, who keeps saying and saying _I’ll be fine_ that _I’m fine_ eventually becomes a reflex so he doesn’t have to worry his family.

It eats and eats away, and on the years and months and days that led up to this last Chopin Competition, it dug at Yuuri, eroded pieces of him until there was less and less left, until he’d sat there to play his nocturne and let the agitation of the piece take what little there had been left.

And it had felt like the only thing to do, to finally give in and chase that agitation back to where he’d refused to confront it— _still_ refuses to confront it, because all the memories he had now feels all too real, and the detachment between what it was when he left and what it’s like now even realer, and he doesn’t know where he stands.

He doesn’t have Victor’s excuse of being a stranger; he _grew up_ here, and he couldn’t even come back owning up to the way the town treated him like a hero when he left, expecting things, believing in him when there’s nothing he even did to prove them right.

He doesn’t know what Victor sees, when he looks at Hasetsu like it’s magic, because all Yuuri sees is a town he can’t fit himself back into.

"Victor," Yuuri says, his breath coming out a visible puff of air. When he turns his head, he’s surprised to find Victor already looking at him, eyes unchanged from how he’d looked across the water. "Where do you turn to for inspiration?"

Victor doesn’t _look_ surprised, per se, but he doesn’t answer immediately. 

He doesn’t look away, though, just studies Yuuri like maybe he’d find the answer somewhere on Yuuri’s face.

Yuuri feels his cheeks warm, even as the cool breeze bites against it and he has to remember how _cold_ he is, but he doesn’t break eye contact.

Finally, Victor smiles, a gentle one. "I wonder, Yuuri."

It’s not really an answer, and for a second, Yuuri feels vaguely cheated, but then Victor’s moving on, tone light; "See, Yuuri, when you write, it's the emotions that are the most important part of your story. You can’t generate emotions from your readers when they’re emotions your characters can’t feel or evoke. And you can’t write emotions that your characters feel when you don’t understand the emotion yourself. It's not like you."

Yuuri’s mind feels a little winded from having to follow Victor’s tangent, and he blinks, confused, before frowning. "Me?" 

Victor hums. "Your music feels different, Yuuri."

"My music?" Yuuri knows he’s an emotional player; it’s his worst trait as a pianist, in a field where the sheet music is God. He considers Victor’s words. "Specifically?"

Victor nods, burying his face into his expensive scarf. It makes Yuuri feel even colder, waiting for Victor to reply.

"I've heard a lot of people play, I've met other pianists, but your music feels—" Victor pauses. It's a startling thing, when Victor has to pause. "It's different." 

"But—" Yuuri says, curiosity getting the best of him. It’s a different feeling altogether, for Victor to have paid enough attention to be able to say this, despite just sitting there without a word in all the time he’s sat in on Yuuri’s practices, has watched and followed music sheets he probably can’t decipher completely. 

He could very well just be saying that for the sake of just doing so, but Yuuri still feels compelled to ask; "How?"

Victor doesn’t seem bothered to be cornered into answering the question, but again, he’s quiet for a while.

Sometimes, Victor speaks like he's used to using words not quite his own—but could be, if he rounds his mouth around the syllables in just the right way. Predictable, maybe, for someone whose livelihood depends upon using words outside of his own experience—but startling, nonetheless, for Yuuri.

It’s even more startling, though, for him to hear Victor say; "It isn’t something I can explain."

Yuuri frowns, and his face must contort funnily, because Victor lets out a half-beat laugh, amused. 

"Anyone ever tell you that music transcends words, Yuuri?"

"People say that because musicians aren’t usually good with words," Yuuri says, before he can help it. 

It comes out a petulant mumble, and Victor’s expression grows even more amused as the lights come on around them, the sun almost completely down. 

It’s true, though; Yuuri has never had much of a talent for words. Music has always taken its place.

It’s disheartening, then, when his one vehicle of communication fails him.

Even worse when he feels like he’d failed music in turn.

"I believe," Victor says, and Yuuri knows it’s going to be dramatic, because Victor has that glint in his eyes, reflecting off the light from the lamps, "that words are always there, when you know to look for them."

Yuuri huffs, unimpressed. "So why can’t you find them?"

Victor gasps, and the sobriety in his face clears, so sudden, like it wasn’t there at all. "How cruel! What if I’m going through a writer’s block right now?"

Yuuri frowns. "Are you?"

"No," Victor’s quick to say. 

Yuuri doesn’t get rid of his frown. "Then find the words. Isn't that your job?"

"Demanding." Victor’s smiling, and Yuuri wishes he can see better, past the scarf hiding most of Victor’s mouth. "I’m trying," he adds, after a beat. "I’ll get back to you, when I’ve found the right words."

It sounds like a long-term promise, the way Victor phrases it.

Yuuri tries not to let it get to him, but it does, of course it does, curls in warm and surprised in his chest.

Out loud, he says; "Okay."

That seems to please Victor, which pleases Makkachin, and for three heartbeats, Yuuri just basks in the absurdity of it all—of standing at the top of Takashima Island’s hill with someone whose existence Yuuri has always processed in bits of ideas and daydreams. And that person’s dog.

He has to huff again and shake his head, but even he’s no stranger to how fond he sounds.

Victor’s smile is glowing, as they hike back down to catch the next ferry.

It’s completely dark by the time they get on it, and the breeze coming in through the open sides doesn’t help with the existing cold. Yuuri berates himself for not grabbing something thicker in the midst of being shooed out of the house by his sister, but before he can get past the regret, there’s something soft and cashmere against his cheeks, wrapping around his neck.

There’s a burst of quiet panic—until he looks up at Victor, throwing the other end of the scarf over the one he’s hung around Yuuri.

Yuuri makes a noise that he refuses to acknowledge sounds like a squawk. "You don’t—"

"It’s alright," Victor says, painfully sincere.

"It’s _not_ alright," Yuuri points out, face too warm all of a sudden. The scarf smells like Victor, luxurious alongside the texture, but also a little bit like the soap he uses at the _onsen_ , and it’s giving Yuuri a _crisis_. "Now _you’re_ going to be cold—"

Victor reaches out to readjust the scarf around Yuuri, and Yuuri’s words die right then and there on his tongue, withering away to non-existence.

"I’m alright," Victor says, point-blank. " _You_ were shivering."

"It’s not—" Yuuri doesn’t even know what he’s being stubborn about now. "It’s not that much of a way back to the inn, I’ll—"

"Exactly," Victor cuts in, voice too smooth and gracious, like Yuuri’s the one doing _him_ a favor.

Victor’s smile is equally stubborn, and Yuuri chews on his bottom lip, searching his head for arguments that aren’t there. Victor _does_ look perfectly fine and warm in his expensive wool coat—but still. _Still_.

He makes it sound so logical, just by smiling at Yuuri like he doesn’t want to be doing anything else.

Yuuri, for a moment, desperately wants to know what he’s thinking.

Things are so different for Victor, too; Yuuri can’t begin to comprehend half of the things he sees on Victor, though there is no doubt he bares open the same things to Victor’s observant eyes. Yuuri gets glimpses, pieces, all puzzling, while Victor gets patches and thoughts that Yuuri has never thought about voicing out loud. 

But that’s just the kind of person Victor is—the kind to worm his way into crevices with ease, because it’s a natural consequence of his existence, for people to part and give him that space, stranger to the city or not. 

Yuuri is no exception to that phenomenon, as much as he tries to wish he is. 

He’d come straight back to Hasetsu from Warsaw intending to gather his life together, to figure things out the way his eighteen-year-old self had when he’d decided to study abroad. But instead he gets this—Victor who steps over easily past the threshold of a world Yuuri had temporarily left, who slots himself into what was supposed Yuuri’s time alone, who pouts and drunk-cheers and readily accepts anything Hasetsu presents to him. Who’s too unpredictable sometimes but nevertheless a warm, steady presence, when and where Yuuri least expects it. 

Victor who’s unfairly beautiful and magnetizing through it all.

But also just a little bit lost, a little bit uncertain, when Yuuri catches him staring at anything for too long. 

If Yuuri’s willing to delude himself, he thinks maybe he and Victor aren’t completely different. That somewhere between how differently they seem to see the world, how differently they deal with things, worlds apart in that regard—somewhere between all of that, there might be overlap, a small, thin space in a Venn diagram where they’re both looking for something. Not quite lost, but not quite found, either.

It’s wishful thinking, probably. Imagined intimacy, a common thing between them that he’s imagining into existence. 

But right now—if even just _for_ now, with Victor less than an arm’s length away and Victor’s scarf around him—Yuuri’s willing to take it.

To take this Victor he’s presented and all the facets that come with, and run away with it for the meantime, as long as time and space permits.

Not everyone gets to see their embodiment of inspiration come to life like this in front of them, after all, and to be able to watch from up close, the way Hasetsu looks from Takashima, the way Yuuri had viewed the thought of home, all those years ago. 

So, like he’d taken Victor’s hand earlier, Yuuri lets himself accept this without questioning it

"Thank you," he murmurs, for the third time that day.

This time, when Victor smiles, it’s not so much sunlit as it is a starry sky, pretty and speckled with bursts of light, wide, expansive—

And full of promises that Yuuri can’t help but fall for, just a little.

 


	4. words fail

Yuuri welcomes the first day of the festival curled up in the _onsen_ ’s locker room.

It isn't his first choice—as a child, he’d defaulted to the storage closet near his parents’ room, but getting there now would have to mean passing by Victor’s room, and sitting between two rows of lockers, not quite squished, was the next best thing.

It’s a gut urge to find the nearest enclosed space when emotional crisis hits: whether it’s huddling under his blankets, curling into himself under a grand piano, finding the nearest bathroom stall—

—or, apparently, running into the men’s locker room before dawn even breaks, sleep deprived and ill-equipped to deal with the three days of festival ruckus ahead.

It's fine, it’s a habit that works, narrows his world down to one space and lessens feelings of being overwhelmed.

Somewhat.

Propped against his bent knees, the primary source of his stress sits serene in all its E-flat major glory, uncaring of Yuuri’s crisis.

After a long moment of staring at the sheet music, Yuuri decides he wants to tear it.

But he exhales, breathes out a long sigh that in a more considerate world would have taken his soul with it, and the impulse dies.

It’s replaced with the urge to bring his knees back so he can rest his forehead against it.

And whine a drawn-out frustrated noise.

He considers calling Phichit and demanding that they take him out of the Composition Concert _right this second_ , but it probably isn’t what Phichit had in mind when he reminded Yuuri to check in. But it’s _Phichit_ , and surely, he would understand, even if it would take a bit too much sighing on Yuuri’s part to make up for the fact that Phichit isn’t able to see his face and understand how much Yuuri means it when he says he doesn’t want to be in the concert.

Van Cliburn was an American pianist, and his foundation an equally American one, but this self-composition concert is celebrated enough to be open to any and all pianists interested, age and nationality and education notwithstanding, provided that they get the green light from the people in charge. But it's an unspoken tradition that promising Juilliard piano students on their last year get to participate in it, as a glorified ritual of sorts—so it makes sense, for Phichit to be in it, to be _excited,_ even, about being in it.

Yuuri had backed out of the concert in his own graduating year, almost two years ago.

The story’s plain and simple: he’d started composing a piece for it, hadn’t been satisfied with the results, had bumbled his way around Celestino until he was officially taken out of the concert for good, never to be on that stage before his graduation and the piece never to be revisited again.

Some days, though, he wonders if that was why his Juilliard history _still_ doesn’t feel complete.

But the thing is that his self-composed piece isn’t faring much better. When he’d showed it to Celestino all those months ago, he’d gotten a slight frown, not quite disapproval but disappointment, like something about it was missing, lackluster. And Yuuri agrees, because the piece reflects too much of how he’d felt when he’d started writing it—lost, displaced, too weak to be anything worth anyone’s time.

With music, it always _has_ to be worth someone’s time.

Hard to do, when Yuuri’s still struggling at being a _person_ worth anyone’s time, much less a musician at that.

He’s too caught up keening against his knees that he doesn’t hear the door opening, and when he looks up to the sound of footsteps, he squeaks, dropping the paper-clipped set of papers right by slippered feet.

"Mari-nee-chan," Yuuri wheezes, clutching the front of his sleep shirt. "What are you—what are you doing _here?_ "

He’d thought for a terrifying second that it would be Victor, because most thoughts that Yuuri have nowadays begin and end with Victor for no rational reason whatsoever—though often without yielding fruit to reality.

Like right now, thankfully.

As it is, his sister stares down unimpressed at him as she picks up the sheet music, a pile of folded towels carefully balanced on the crook of another arm.

"All the guys are gonna be heading out to the shrine today and someone’s gotta replace the towels here," she says, and Yuuri dazedly registers that as an answer to his question. "Did I disturb your, uh—practice? Or whatever?"

"No, I—I was just—" Yuuri waves a hand, hopes his sister understands. "You didn’t disturb anything. Really."

Mari gives the first music sheet a sharp once-over. "Which dead guy is this one by?"

"Um," Yuuri says, after an offbeat. "Me."

Mari frowns.

"I mean—I’m not a dead guy—I think—I hope—but—" Yuuri huffs a nervous little laugh, holding out a hand. "This one’s by me."

"Damn." Mari stares at the sheet music with renewed interest, like she’s looking for signs that Yuuri’s messing with her, but then she clucks her tongue. "What’s it about? Like—what’s your, you know, ‘vision’? Your concept?"

Those terms sound suspiciously like they’ve been learned from pop idol interviews, and it makes Yuuri smile, relaxing enough to quietly admit; "It’s supposed to represent my—um—my life? As in—my journey—and stuff."

Getting approval for a self-composed piece is a three-way process: there’s a theme, and then a stylistic pitch, before the drafts can start. The problem with Yuuri’s piece was that his final draft still felt like a rough one, and it’s an issue that’s coming back to bite him, now that he actually has to face the fact past a simple, apologetic _I messed up real bad and it’s not working out._

"Huh," Mari says. "And you wrote it all yourself?"

Slowly, Yuuri nods.

"Huh," Mari repeats. "Well, I don’t really know anything ‘bout music. But again— _damn._ That’s impressive."

Yuuri knows she’s saying that because of all the tuplets dominating the top half of the page, overwhelming to eyes that can’t recognize it, and he says as much. "It’s not impressive," he mumbles. "There’s a reason it hasn’t been performed yet."

"Coming from my genius little brother," Mari says, giving the sheet one more look before handing it back. "With a habit of downplaying the shit he’s done? No, thanks, but I don’t believe that."

"Mari-nee-chan," Yuuri sighs, taking the sheets with clammy hands.

"Yuuri," she returns, flat. "You’re a hero to the entire town. You can set a ship on fire and send it across Hasetsu Bay for no reason and people will turn it into a yearly city festival."

Yuuri flushes deeply at that, but his mouth doesn’t quite work fast enough to muster up a protest before his sister’s moving on;

"You haven’t performed it yet, have you?"

Wordless, Yuuri shakes his head.

"Didn’t think so." Mari yawns, the sound rounding out her words into something almost stern. "I was wondering if we missed one of your performances."

It’s Yuuri’s turn to frown, the words coming up fast in the sudden confusion. "Do you—"

"Keep track of all your performances? ‘Course we do." Mari dumps the pile of towels on the nearest bench. "It’s an event here every time. You know that."

"I mean—" Yuuri’s mouth feels dry. "I didn’t think—"

The idea of people watching and expecting isn’t foreign—it’s an accepted fact that comes with being a performer—but it holds a certain weight when applied to the people of Hasetsu, to people he passed by as a child, to his _family_. He tries not to think about it much, but it’s an inevitable thought that crosses his head when he performs; that there _is_ such a thing as perfection, and it’s the only thing that these people deserve.

Even if Yuuri can never deliver.

"We don’t really know anything ‘bout music," Mari repeats, sharp eyes not hiding the fact that she knows the kind of thoughts going through Yuuri’s head. Her movements are casual, though, as she starts putting fresh towels into baskets in the cubbies. "But we know when something’s impressive. And it’s not like we ever stop being proud of you."

Yuuri’s stomach lurches. "Even if—"

"Yuuri," Mari says, cutting in quick. It leaves the entire room in abrupt silence, and her sigh is too loud when it comes. "There _is_ no ‘even if’. It isn’t a conditional thing."

That brings a lump into Yuuri’s throat, and he doesn’t dare talk past it.

"Listen up." As if to punctuate her words, Mari pushes a refilled basket back with an audible _thunk_. When Yuuri looks up at her, she’s plopping down on the bench right in front of him, stare heavy. "The thing you gotta understand is that—the way that Mom and Dad love you? That’s not something you work for. That’s not something you have to _deserve_. It’s something they give you because you’re you. It’s something we—"

She breaks off, expression pained like it was when she’d seen Yuuri off at the airport the first time. She hadn’t said a word the entire time, nothing past a hug and a murmured _Take care of yourself_ , stiff. She doesn’t stay wordless this time, just leans back slightly on the bench and offers Yuuri another sigh. "It’s something _we_ give you because we, you know, love you. There’s no requirement to come _home_. There’s no requirement to be _you_."

Phichit, Victor, Minako-sensei, Mari-nee-chan—they all have this way of making things sound simple, straightforward, and Yuuri knows there’s weight to those words, too, except it doesn’t get through, doesn’t register through his head the way he wants it to, because the rest of him wants to say something else. It’s a song he can’t make out properly through soundproofed glass, like he has to parse the sound through the keys he sees someone else playing, a disconnect between stimulus and perception, and something lost in translation.

Mari sees that on his face—she always does, because time and distance changes a lot of things, but maybe the way an older sibling knows you isn’t one of them.

"Okay—look—" She leans forward this time, a bit of determined frustration etched in her forehead. "Love is a decision made by the other person, Yuuri—for reasons of their own. It’s not something you have to understand, you know? It just _is_. You don’t get to decide something else for the other person. Sometimes what you see in your head isn’t the same thing other people see. If we want to love you and support you—and we _do_ , because you’re family, no matter where the hell you go and no matter what the hell you call home now—then we will. There’s nothing you can do to change that."

Mari offers one last sigh, deeper than the ones before. "Did that make sense, at least?"

The expression on her face, as she says that, reminds Yuuri of being tested on his first set of _kanji_ by her, restless because there was a variety show she needed to catch in half an hour. It’s a juvenile association to make, combined with the childish way she leaves her hands on her knees, staring expectantly at Yuuri—except Mari has been the older, quasi-maternal figure in his life for so, so long that it’s hard to imagine her as anything but that.

It is, maybe, that realization that settles in first within Yuuri.

He manages a nod, not quite honest, but not wholly insincere, either.

"Good." Mari looks genuinely relieved. There’s a split second where she blinks, and the expression on her face turns odd, soft in a way Yuuri isn’t used to seeing on her, but she blinks again and it’s gone as she stands up.

"God, I need a smoke." A hand reaches out above Yuuri—it hesitates, twitching, before running through Yuuri’s hair, quick but purposeful, with barely any time to allow him a surprised squawk. "You get out of here, too. I know what you’re doing and I don’t think I should be letting you do it."

Yuuri frowns after her. "What am I doing?"

Mari doesn’t even look back at him, already halfway out of Yuuri’s sight as she rounds the corner towards the door. "Doing the self-isolation thing isn’t a permanent solution. It won’t make the big things simpler just because all you have to deal with is your own head."

"Wait—" Yuuri scrambles to his feet, almost crumpling his sheet music in the process. "Mari-nee—"

She sticks her head back, giving Yuuri a look, the seriousness in it played up. "What?"

"I, um—" Yuuri’s not really sure what he wants to say, but he manages a smile, more mouth corners than it is teeth. "—just wanted to say you’re my favorite sister.

Mari stares at him, unamused, but then she scoffs—and it sounds more like a laugh, really, to trained ears. "I better damn be," she says. "Now find something to do, you punk. Long three days ahead, you’ll find something to help with."

The door slides shut lightly behind her, leaving Yuuri alone in the locker room.

The lump in his throat is still there, but the twinge in his stomach hovers reluctant now, not quite sure about its purpose anymore.

It takes a few more minutes, but eventually Yuuri picks up his sheet music and follows.

 

 

 

 

 

By the time he actually goes out to the main area, dressed for the day and feeling significantly less like he’s just spent all twenty-three years of his life crying his tear ducts out, he finds Victor in the kitchen.

Leaning over beside Yuuri’s mother, nodding intently and listening like his life depended on every word.

For a long, ridiculous minute, Yuuri just stares at them: his mother’s explaining the intricacies of the family _katsudon_ recipe, apparently, partly in Japanese, partly English, partly in physical demonstration of what she’s saying. Victor’s hanging on to every syllable, watching the sauce thicken over the stove with enchantment that Yuuri has learned to expect of Victor and Victor alone.

Yuuri doesn’t really process this image so much as he just accepts that it’s happening, somehow, and he stands there gaping at his mother’s fond _Vicchan_ s and Victor’s own sweet murmurs back, the delight genuine and his hands excited as he reaches to take over pan duty.

Then he turns around and sees Yuuri there, and it’s _vibrant_ , the way his face lights up.

"Yuuri, I’m making _katsudon_!"

It takes conscious effort, but Yuuri manages to step into the actual kitchen, just in time to see Victor coo as he himself pours mixed egg yolk on top of the cutlets.

"Oh, Yuuri," his mother says, and it’s too much _sunshine_ all at once, with his mother and Victor beaming at him at the same time. "Good timing! Can you get the bowls ready while Vicchan does the cutlets? I need to check in on the scallops?"

"The _scallops_?" Yuuri repeats, but his mother just tuts fondly at both him and Victor before heading out of the kitchen, humming under her breath.

"The bowls, Yuuri~"

Yuuri watches her go with something just sort of disbelief, but he looks back at Victor—hard at work over at least three pans at the same time—and sighs, pulling out bowls from their pile and arranging them on the biggest free counter. "Have you been, um, cooking long?"

"Since I woke up!" Victor chirps, his grip on the chopsticks easy as he pokes experimentally at a sizzling cutlet. He smiles at Yuuri. "Or—since I got up. I didn’t really sleep."

"You didn’t?" That makes two of them, but Yuuri frowns. "Is—is everything okay?"

It doesn’t occur to him that he’s probably overstepping a line with that question, but Victor doesn’t even react, just hums as he breaks another set of eggs into a new bowl. "I was writing. And before I knew it, it sounded too busy outside my room for me to go back to sleep."

Yuuri stills. Victor was writing. Something had compelled Victor to write.

He shakes the thought quickly. "I’m sorry," he says, "that you couldn’t get some sleep at least."

"No, no, on the contrary, I’m excited!" Victor says, and sounds appropriately excited for it, because it’s Victor. When Yuuri looks up, he’s suddenly too close, watching Yuuri root around the drawers for the wooden spoon he needs for the rice. "You don’t get much sleep, either, do you, Yuuri?"

Yuuri almost drops the spoon as soon as he finds it. Victor’s eyes are perceptive, though, past the smile, and it makes Yuuri feel scrutinized, somehow. "I—Jetlag," he manages.

"It’s been weeks," Victor points out, voice still light. "I myself got over the jetlag in mere days."

"Victor," Yuuri says.

"Yuuri," Victor throws right back, but he moves away at least. Yuuri’s getting very used to the particular sort of warmth Victor brings with him, pressing against Yuuri’s side, Yuuri’s back, _in_ Yuuri’s space, one way or another. It’s a strange thing to be so aware of, but Yuuri’s getting fully used to it, too—to the phenomenon that is Victor, forever circling around Yuuri. "You don’t have to tell me. I’m just curious."

"Okay, you say that," Yuuri says, waving his spoon, "but you’re looking at me with those eyes."

Victor smiles, mouth and eyes widening for effect. "What eyes?"

"Where you really wanna know."

"Well, I do," Victor says. "I want to know everything about you."

Yuuri accidentally touches the hot edge of the rice pot, and he hisses, taking that excuse to turn away from Victor, abrupt. "Don’t—" he tries, but it’s not really worth it. He knows it’s not. Victor will say whatever Victor thinks to say. "They’re just—they’re dreams, okay? Sometimes, I get dreams."

Victor, of course, accepts it with grace. "Just dreams?"

"Just—" Yuuri puts all his concentration into scooping out rice, plopping them neatly into the bowls. It’s the only thing he’d been allowed to do as a child, and he’s developed a mindless method for it, even if no doubt Minako-sensei would have scolded him for touching a hot pot without mitts. "They’re not nightmares, either."

He sighs, realizes that Victor’s eyes are completely on him now.

"The _katsudon_ , Victor."

Victor straightens into attention so fast it’s almost comical, and Yuuri can’t help but soften at that, watching Victor turn the fire on the first pan without even thinking about it. He’s so careful—about putting the first few cutlets, egg yolk pooling around it, on top of the bowls Yuuri has already prepared, and everything from there, calm and concentrated and more in his element than Yuuri is.

"Do you—" he asks, before he can help it, "Do you cook often?"

Victor snatches his gaze away from the bowls. "Very basic things."

Yuuri frowns. "Don’t you—I don’t know—have people to do this sort of thing?"

"For me?" Victor looks thoughtful. "I suppose. But I don’t really keep a decent schedule. And it’s easier to cater to myself than to ask someone to do so for me."

That’s a strange statement, from someone who always seem more than ready to cater to other people.

The frown deepens. "You don’t keep a—? But you—"

"Here, I do," Victor says, staring back at Yuuri intently for a long moment before he goes right back to another pan, ever efficient. "But other times, it’s very hard—I live alone, and I travel a lot, you see, and there isn’t much space to have a schedule within that. I’m married, after all."

Yuuri just about knocks over an entire row of bowls. "What?"

Victor’s smile is wide and pretty. "To my job," he says, humming. He holds up his right hand, flashing an unadorned ring finger. "I _did_ say I live alone, yes?"

Yuuri hadn’t realized his heart had near-stopped until it picks back up again, restless and betrayed and—and relieved? Maybe. "Oh," he says, embarrassed to hear it come out crackly. He clears his throat. "You—oh."

"Oh," Victor echoes, sounding unfairly delighted. "What about you, Yuuri? Anyone waiting for you back in New York?"

"No, no, no—" Yuuri says it a little too loud, and he frowns down at himself. "I mean—no, I don’t—I—not like _that_."

"Not like what?" Victor returns, the cheer in his voice gentling. "You—"

"Victor—"

"—sounded so serious on the phone the other day. Is it because—"

"It’s because of this _concert_ I’m stressing about," Yuuri cuts in, weary, before Victor can even complete his assumption. "I know you’re a writer, but it’s really not as romantic as you think. Okay?"

He’s trying to frown, but the expression on his face keeps ending up feeling more petulant than he wants it to be, so he sighs, smoothing his face with his forearm before going back to spooning rice, diligent.

It’s such childish petulance, too, and he doesn’t blame Victor for doing his little huff-laugh.

"Okay, okay," he says, casual in placing cutlets on another row of bowls. "Is this concert also why you’ve been having, what was it, not-nightmares?"

Yuuri can’t help his wince. "No," he says, honest. "Not—not really."

"But it’s one of the reasons you still can’t sleep?"

Yuuri sighs.

Which Victor apparently takes for a _yes_ , because he sighs, too, sympathetic. "What’s the concert on?"

It’s alarming, that Yuuri doesn’t even take a moment before he answers, quiet; "A piece I had to write about my own life."

It’s even more alarming, when Victor is immediately silent in reply, nothing but the sound of the last pan of _katsudon_ sizzling over the stove.

"Okay, look—" Yuuri hurries on, finishing off the last row of bowls. He feels an inexplicable need to defend himself, if only because Victor’s suddenly looking at him like Yuuri had accused _him_ of writing a lackluster piece of his own. "I know that making things _about_ other things probably isn’t new to you, but it is to me, and I just don’t like that it feels incomplete and I don’t know what to do about it because I don’t even know what it needs to _be_ complete—right—so—"

Victor makes a weird sound. "Yuuri."

His throat feels tight, and his lungs even tighter. "And the idea of having to perform it _for_ other people—not just any audience, but people close to _me,_ because it’s about _my_ life _—_ is stressing me out, because it’s supposed to be something personal—"

"Yuuri—"

"—And I don’t know what to think, where to start, because I don’t know _how_ and now my sister’s seen it and my best friend thinks I _can_ do it, and I have to think about this on top of practicing a special piece for my childhood friends getting married and—"

"Yuuri—" There are suddenly hands on either side of Yuuri’s face, squishing slightly and cutting off his word flow so abruptly that Yuuri’s breath hitches. He blinks, and Victor’s face is too close, peering at him with wide eyes. "Breathe."

Yuuri does, his lungs creaking in gratitude.

Victor exhales, too, hands loosening around Yuuri’s face—but not letting go. " _Wow_ ," he says. "That was really fast."

"Sorry," Yuuri says—wheezes, really. "I didn’t mean to—"

"It’s alright," Victor tells him, index finger tapping gently against Yuuri’s cheek. "Don’t apologize."

He still doesn’t move away.

"Um," Yuuri says, because his face is getting really warm, and he knows Victor can tell; he’s staring down at Yuuri like he’s a magical specimen as enchanting as the _katsudon_ he’s just been cooking.

Which—

"Victor," he manages. "It’s going to burn."

That seems to snap Victor out of whatever trance he’s in, because he immediately lets go, leaving Yuuri to put his own hands up to his face, half-unconscious, watching Victor finish off the last of the bowls.

The egg yolk has cooked itself into a custard texture over the rice by the time Victor speaks again.

"Do you have to do the concert?"

Yuuri blinks—blinks a lot, before he realizes there’s no one else around for the question to be directed to. "I don’t."

"Then?" Victor does this thing where his eyelashes lower slightly, and his mouth parts, when he gives in completely to curiosity. This is what he looks like now, staring at Yuuri like he doesn’t understand why Yuuri is a book he hasn’t read before. "Why not— _not_ do it?"

Yuuri has to wonder when he’s started noticing little bits about Victor like that.

"I already skipped out on it once," he says, staring down at the floor. "And—" He pauses, weighing his words. But there’s no use to doing that, when it comes to him. "It’s even worse, when I think about people looking at me and thinking I can’t do it."

It’s the first time he’s admitted that out loud, but it blooms true in his chest as soon as he says it out loud.

It’s one thing to doubt himself, to curse himself when he _knows_ he could have done better; it’s one thing if it’s all on him, in him, within him, but it’s another thing altogether if it’s letting the rest of the world get away with thinking he _can’t_.

It’s at such sharp odds with the rest of him, he knows that, but it feels, good, almost, hearing it put into words.

Victor doesn’t seem oblivious to the weight of Yuuri’s admission, but he nods, slow, before a corner of his mouth is darting up. "You’re a very surprising person, Yuuri. I like that about you."

Yuuri blinks, frowns, lets a hundred different varieties of confusion flit through his face, probably, but then Mari’s there, stopping short in the doorway of the kitchen, tray ready for the bowls.

She looks between the two of them, expression constipated, and says;

"Did I interrupt something?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the kitchen fiasco, Yuuri somehow manages to lose Victor within the crowds already filtering in and out of the inn. He gets swept up within the chaos himself, parked by the entrance to help people coming in while the rest of his family alternate between serving, entertaining and cooking—which, presumably, is where Victor is, perfectly happy shadowing Yuuri’s mother and all around enjoying being a fixture in the inn’s kitchen more than any other guest can hope to be.

Around dinnertime, though, Yuuri’s mother shows up by the reception area, hugging a tray close to her chest and mouth pulled in a concerned frown. "Yuuri, did you fight with Vicchan?"

Yuuri frowns, too. "No?"

"He just looked troubled, that’s all," his mother says. "Is it because you turned him down?"

"Turned him—what?" Yuuri keeps frowning—until it sinks in, and then he’s raising both hands up, shaking his head, aggressive. "No, no, no, what—Mom, why would you even think that—he’s a guest, he was here before I was, why would he even—"

"I’m joking, Yuuri." His mother laughs, effectively stopping Yuuri. "I’m allowed to tease you, aren’t I?"

Yuuri’s left to flush, embarrassed and feeling like a little kid.

"In any case, you should change for the _yoiyama_ soon," his mother says, reaching up to pinch one cheek, patting it affectionately as she goes. "And knock on Vicchan’s door to see if he’s okay."

That, more than anything, is a sure sign that Victor’s been completely taken into the family, and it weighs heavy and distracting in Yuuri’s mind as he changes into his _yukata_ for the Kunchi, the fabric too thin now for the autumn weather they’re having, but an annual tradition anyway.

It’s a little short around his ankles, but it still falls around him the same way it did when he was eighteen, like his body hasn’t changed at all.

Which has to be a lie.

He takes a three-second look at himself in the mirror, sighs, and goes.

Victor gets an entire corner of the inn to himself, right near the private rooms for Yuuri’s family. Yuuri’s almost jealous, that the hall’s near empty aside from workers for the inn rushing around, some changed and others rushing to do so. It’s familiar, the busy ruckus of the Hasetsu Kunchi, and Yuuri waits outside Victor’s room for a bit, taking in the familiarity and nostalgia.

It also feels new, foreign, to be twenty-three and basking in the same things his teenage self did.

Maybe not enough, either; he’d been so busy thinking ahead, to the future, to New York, to more and more music, that it’s almost no wonder his memories from back then feel contrived, edited. He’d been so busy holding to ideas in his head that, maybe, weren’t as relevant as they seemed to be when he’d thought of them as talismans, anchoring him to something he was too stubborn to let go of.

But standing in that hallway, watching different people rush by, faces unlike the ones that rushed by when he was eighteen, Yuuri thinks it’s probably easier, to just let new memories replace old ones.

It’s too romantic a sentiment, though, and he feels ridiculous, caught up in something that sounds like it would be in one of Victor’s books.

He moves to knock on one panel before he slides the door open—but then Victor’s voice floats through, syllables not quite clear.

It’s deja vu that hits first—deja vu from the time Yuuri had come back to Victor talking on the phone outside the inn. His Russian is as weary this time as it was then, though it sounds less like he’s arguing with someone and more like he’s just trying to persuade them.

It’s still a hard thing to listen to, even if Yuuri doesn’t understand a word.

"Alright," Victor says, and it registers delayed in Yuuri’s head that this is in English. "I’ll leave."

Yuuri freezes, hand still raised, poised to knock.

"I will leave at the end of November. Give me until then." He sounds tired, as stressed out as Yuuri had felt, ranting to him earlier. There’s more Russian, and then; "Tell Yuri he doesn’t have to come."

Yuuri twitches at the sound of his name, stepping back out of instinct—but his legs don’t take into account the bottom of his _yukata_ , and he trips back, spine hitting the wall behind him as he falls on his butt, hissing reflexively.

There’s two whole seconds of silence before Victor’s door is sliding open, and Yuuri has to close his eyes against the light suddenly filtering into the hallway from the lamps in the room.

He hears Victor say; "I have to go, Yakov," still in English, before he opens his eyes, blinking fast against the harsh light.

Then Victor’s hand is there, helping him up.

Yuuri can’t look him in the eye, forcing his feet steady. "S-Sorry—I didn’t mean to eavesdrop."

"Yuuri," Victor says, hand traveling up from Yuuri’s hand to his shoulder. "We really have to stop overhearing each other’s phone calls."

"I—I _know,_ " Yuuri stammers out. Victor doesn’t really sound upset, though, and Yuuri slowly raises his eyes to see if his expression matches.

What meets him is a map of wonder on Victor’s face as he holds Yuuri out by the shoulder, like a hung shirt he’s wondering if he should try on. But he’s looking at Yuuri like he did before they’d gone to Takashima, when he’d taken a picture of Yuuri with Makkachin, and Yuuri doesn’t understand a thing—other than the fact that underneath that expression, there _is_ something else, a remnant of Victor’s phone call, the weariness of his voice translating to the crinkles around his eyes as he smiles, falling short of the usual.

"What are you wearing?"

"It’s—for the—" Yuuri waves a helpless hand. "The _yoiyama_ —it’s—they usually kick off the festival by decorating the floats with night lanterns and taking them through the city—and the inn usually dresses up, so—"

"I see," Victor says, awed. "You look beautiful, Yuuri."

That sentiment might have carried more if Yuuri hadn’t heard—read—it before, impersonal on an autographed note. He just sighs, tapping Victor’s hand on his shoulder.

Before he can stop himself, though, he wraps his own hand around Victor’s wrist instead, lowering it but not letting it go. "We should, um—" His words completely elude him today, his brain too busy processing Victor’s heartbeat pulsing against his thumb. "We should go."

Victor stares down at Yuuri’s hand on his wrist, but he doesn’t shake it off—just stares at it, like physical touch is an entirely new idea to him. "Go where?"

"The, um—we only have about five minutes before the floats pass by our—" He trips over the word, and has to clear his throat. "By this side of the city—and then we can wander around the stalls after that and—"

Victor’s already gasping, excited, and he nods—nods three times so fast his head’s almost a blur. For a moment, the weariness is gone, completely wiped off as he turns to a dozing Makkachin—who’s probably bored out of his mind after a full day of not being allowed out due to the crowds.

He expects Victor to pull away now, but he doesn’t, just takes Yuuri with him as he leans over to pat Makkachin and apologize more; his apologies go mostly unheard, with Makkachin half-asleep.

Yuuri has to smile at the sight anyway, and he’s still smiling when Victor looks up, expectant, own smile turning coy.

"Are you gonna take me through the best night of my life, Yuuri?"

Yuuri rolls his eyes, surprising even to him at how good-natured it is, but he turns, taking Victor with him.

"More like, I’ll be really disappointed if you don’t enjoy the next three days."

 

 

 

 

 

 

If someone asked Yuuri to recount his first Kunchi night in literal years, he’d scarcely be able to.

It’s a blur of Victor—lanterns—the steady beat of the drums—floats he’s all seen before but seem grander now with Victor’s gasps and picture-taking in the background—rows of stalls upon stalls upon stalls leading up to the shrine—and Victor, Victor, Victor, an impossibility catching light in the glow of the _yoiyama_ festivities.

Yuuri thinks he should be horrified, but he’s mostly just awed, watching Victor try every stall-bought food he can get his hands on: _takoyaki, okonomiyaki,_ the city’s special _ikayaki_ , even _karumeyaki_ in all its flinch-inducing pure sugar glory. He eats two sticks of fried chicken, accepts buttered potato from Yuuri’s father, and by the time he and Yuuri start walking away, ostensibly to head back home, he’s just finished a whole stick of _dango_ , covered in extra syrup because he’d given the young man working the stall too bright a smile.

Yuuri feels _exhausted_ , to say the least, and his feet hurt from the sandals he’s wearing. His feet are probably blistered, as they always are, but it’s tradition, every year, and it’s its own consolation that he won’t have to wear this for the next two days, even if Mari will still wheedle him into wearing the _onsen’s_ unofficial uniform _yukata_.

The streets away from the highlight of the festival are mostly empty, aside from high school kids running past just because they can, or locals having to shuttle more food from their homes to the shrine, and it’s a relaxing kind of quiet, matching the tiredness sinking into Yuuri’s bones, ounce by ounce.

"Yuuri, are you okay?"

Yuuri stops walking, abrupt, pain shooting up from the pads of his feet and up his ankle, but he turns around. They’re walking uphill, just blocks away from the inn, and Yuuri a few steps ahead, so the effect is looking diagonally down at Victor, who blinks up at him in wide-eyed concern. "What?"

"You’re—" Victor gestures, vague. "You’re limping."

"Oh, I—It’s okay," Yuuri says, which sounds wildly dismissive and a little alarming, probably, but he means it. "It, um—it happens."

Victor looks skeptical—and also like he’s _this_ close to going forward and inspecting Yuuri’s ankle himself, so Yuuri panics, stepping back for good measure and blurting out;

"Are _you_ okay?"

It’s a question that’s been on the back of his mind since Day One, but it’s come to a low simmer in the past few hours—from the phone call, the tightness in Victor’s smile, the way he gets distracted for just a little bit, staring off into space until Yuuri ushers him into the next stall and the expression goes, genuine if temporary.

It makes something in Yuuri’s chest ache, seeing Victor like that. Yuuri’s seen sadness, he’s seen heartache, he’s seen disappointment and anger—but Victor is none of that, just a vacant sort of contemplative distraction, and somehow, that’s worse, because Yuuri’s bad enough dealing with his classmates after a bad performance unless Phichit’s there, and there’s no way he knows what to do, at a time like this.

It doesn’t stop the nagging urge to want to do something, though, because there’s something that floats around heavy in seeing someone as untouchable as Victor like this—like how Yuuri feels, uncertain and vulnerable.

It always passes, the look on his face, because Victor’s hold on his social graces are as natural as the rest of him is, but that just bothers Yuuri more, somehow, now that he’s started to notice it.

He almost expects it, when Victor says; "I’m fine?"

Confused, too, like he’s sure he can’t be anything else.

Yuuri sighs, looks up at the sky for a moment or two, contemplating his life decisions. Saga’s sky isn’t as starry as it used to be, when Yuuri was younger, but there’s still flecks of starlight here and there, calming.

"I heard you—earlier," he says, not quite knowing where this is coming from. He lowers his gaze back down, and finds that it’s Victor staring up at the sky now, neck craned. "It’s—you’re leaving at the end of the month?"

Victor blinks up at the sky for two whole beats, enthralled, before he turns to Yuuri in surprise. Then the surprise melts away, leaving in its place a smile that’s so unbearably blasé, so _what can I do_?, that it does the complete opposite of assuring Yuuri.

"I’m supposed to be working on an autobiography right now," Victor says, conversational. Yuuri knows that’s all that they are, facts for conversation, but it still sounds like a wrong note, Victor’s tone. "Because the publishing agent thinks it will sell well, and my agent does, too. And I did try writing it, for the past month or so. I have no issues with writing it."

He pauses, still nonchalant. "But I wasn’t really satisfied with what I have. So I said I’ll take a vacation and not write for a bit, because I thought it might be writer’s block, no new ideas coming in. But that doesn’t seem to be the case here, because I’ve _been_ writing. Just not what I should be."

Parts of it belong to a familiar spiel, and it takes Yuuri a humiliating moment to realize it’s reflected in his own head, in his own thoughts about his Com-Con piece.

"So yes, Yuuri," Victor says, giving a one-shouldered shrug. "I _do_ ‘get’ what it’s like to create something about yourself and finding something about it missing and lackluster." He smiles. "Unfortunately."

 _But it’s your_ life, Yuuri wants to say, only that argument applies to his own, too.

There has to be a disconnect there somewhere, because Victor’s life has been a goal point for Yuuri’s since he was in middle school, and if he was—if he was Victor, he would write all the pieces he can about his life, about every turning point, every rise, every success.

Wouldn’t he?

But Victor’s face is wholly sincere in its uncertainty, the way it’s always been since Yuuri had come home to him in Yu-topia, and it’s like a bunch of puzzle pieces falling onto the board, somewhere in the general vicinity of where they need to be if not quite fitting.

He hadn’t been wrong, maybe, when he’d thought they were both lost, in their own way.

The ache in Yuuri’s chest climbs new heights at that, becomes something he wants to claw out, and he’s moving forward before he can think it through, sandals dragging against the sloped concrete as he wraps his arms around Victor’s shoulders, hands shaking.

Victor tenses—surprise carved into his posture, and Yuuri almost jerks away just like that, cursing every second that led to this impulsive, irrational decision—but then there’s hands on Yuuri’s back, light and hesitant, but reciprocating.

"What is this?" Victor says, but he just sounds utterly surprised, like it didn’t even occur to him that it would be a hug until right this second.

"It’s, um—it’s a hug?" Yuuri says, too simple for the confusion in Victor’s voice. "You just—"

 _Looked like you needed one_ , Yuuri wants to say, but there’s no nice way to go about that, so he doesn’t.

He thinks of all the times that a hug _had_ been a simple thing—not quite a solution, but always something appreciated, for all that he grew up within a familial environment where hugs where the highest form of comfort available, if someone wanted it. He thinks of proud hugs from Minako-sensei and his parents, of stubborn hugs from Mari when neither of them want to admit sappy things to each other, to Celestino’s awkward one-armed hugs, to Phichit’s full-bodied tight bearhugs, all of them radiating warmth in their own way, at points where Yuuri doesn’t _want_ to hear words, doesn’t want to hear sounds at all.

It’s probably why the long distance from home had pained him so much, because Yuuri has always relied on physical actions of comfort than he does unhelpful words of consolation, of easy-to-say _We’re proud of you’s_ and _Do well next time_ ’s. Yuuri only knows to move, to show, sometimes impulsively, like this, because words are too hard a concept to be any help to the emotions he always feels so deeply.

He wants to convey all that warmth to Victor now, because he doesn’t know how else to, and because he feels just a little bit short of desperate, to do something, anything.

This sentiment is probably equally hard to grasp, though, for someone so reliant on his ability to turn words into a tool, for someone who always knows what to say, until it’s about himself, and suddenly the words don’t work.

They really aren’t too different, in that.

Victor doesn’t say anything, either, but Yuuri can feel his heartbeat against him.

Yuuri’s just about to retract his arms, the embarrassment and _why did I do that?_ catching up fast, when he feels himself being lifted off his feet. He squeaks, squawks, does a variety of progressively mortifying noises, before he registers enough to say; "Victor—what are you doing—put me _down_ —"

Victor does, miraculously, but he’s smiling wide when Yuuri detaches himself, wary.

"Let me carry you home, Yuuri!"

Yuuri’s sure he’s misheard, and he hopes his face conveys the full severity of his disbelief. " _What_?"

"Not even piggyback?" Victor says, pouting. There’s no traces of the expression from earlier left at all, other than the tiredness around his eyes that’s probably more genuine exhaustion from today than anything else. "Please?"

Despite himself, Yuuri feels a little lighter, seeing that.

"No, I can _walk_ home," Yuuri says, taking a step back—only to forget the road goes uphill, and proving himself wrong as he topples backwards.

Victor catches him by the wrist before he can go all the way, but it’s still really, really distressing.

"You’re unreal," Yuuri says, when Victor sparkles at him like an Edwardian era gentleman. "You know that?"

"I do," Victor sings, and, as if he can’t get any more ridiculous, bends down on one knee. "Will you let this unreal man carry you home, sweet prince? Lest this noble heart crack?"

"Are you paraphrasing Shakespeare on me?" Yuuri mutters, flustered anyway, not quite sure what to do with a Victor Nikiforov kneeling in front of him while quoting Hamlet’s death scene like it’s some sort of paragon of romance. "I’m not getting on, Victor. Get up or I’m leaving you here."

" _Yuuri_ ," Victor whines, but he doesn’t get up. "Please. For me."

"Why," Yuuri says, because he’s tired and his feet really do hurt and he just wants to go home and sleep without dreams and wake up early again tomorrow. And not be flustered by Victor. In that order. "Honestly. Why."

"Research!" Victor cries, like this should have already occurred to Yuuri. "For the book I just started writing!"

"Which includes a piggyback scene," Yuuri mutters, flat, completely ignoring the part of him that rejoices in being privy to the contents of a new book.

"It does now," Victor returns, serene.

"Why," Yuuri repeats.

"Because you’re the main inspiration for it," Victor says, without missing a beat.

He smiles, wide and genuine and lovely, like it’s perfectly normal to say that to someone he’s known for roughly three weeks, tops. At night. In an empty street.

Yuuri has to have developed immunity to the absurdity of his life just from sheer proximity to Victor, because he lets Victor usher him down, guiding his arms back around Victor’s shoulders, awkward.

He doesn’t expect it to be _comfortable_ , exactly, but it’s not uncomfortable when Victor stands up, barely struggling even with Yuuri’s weight on him.

Yuuri feels too aware of his chest being pressed against Victor’s back, too aware that his mouth is right beside Victor’s ear, too aware that _Victor_ himself is probably too aware of Yuuri’s heartbeat.

He allows himself an internal groan before he says; "I can’t believe I’m letting you do this. I can’t believe _you_."

"Research," Victor reminds him, which is a load of crap, from someone who’s been insisting on being viewed as a tourist this whole time.

Yuuri wants to blow air into Victor’s ear, but the chances of him getting dropped are too promising, so instead he says, petulant; "In another life, I can lift three of you."

He feels more than sees Victor nod, no hesitance. "I’m sure you can, Yuuri," he says, utterly serious. "I’m sure you can do anything you want to do, in this life or another."

It really is _too_ serious. "Anything?"

Victor nods again. "You haven’t let the world beat you down, have you?"

Yuuri doesn’t think he expects an answer, because then he’s suddenly running, Yuuri on his back and everything, hurtling through the streets of Hasetsu like Yuuri used to with Yuuko and Takeshi, either to prove a point that he _can_ carry Yuuri, research or not, or to fulfill some sort of weird childhood desire that never saw the light of the day.

Either way, Yuuri spends three long minutes of his life holding on to dear life, ignoring Victor’s hands around his thighs, warm and steady.

Victor finally slows down when they reach the entrance to Yu-topia, appropriately gasping for breath—

—only to trip on something, toppling over easily and bringing Yuuri with him.

They fall half on grass and half on fallen leaves that haven’t been raked in the rest of the commotion, and again, Yuuri thanks his newfound immunity to all things absurd with Victor, because he just lies there, staring at Hasetsu’s stars.

The edges of his mouth curls up first—at the idea of Victor actually carrying him home, running like a kid, and then _tripping,_ anticlimactic and sitcom-worthy and all the words that Yuuri would have never, ever applied to the Victor of his teenagehood.

"Yuuri?"

And then he’s laughing, the sound coming from deep within his stomach, more pull than it is actual sound past soft chuckling, both of his hands reaching up to rub from underneath his glasses as the laughter hits second wind, unbidden but coming anyway.

"Oh—oh my god—" he wheezes.

"What?" Victor’s voice, a smile in it, even if it sounds more confused than anything. "What is it?"

"Are you seriously asking me this? You—" Yuuri lowers his hands and finds Victor sitting up and staring down at him, like if he looked deeply enough into Yuuri’s face, he’ll figure out exactly what’s so ridiculous about what he just did.

He’s too close, though, and Yuuri’s laughter dies abruptly in his throat.

Somehow, he manages; "I can’t believe you."

It sounds different from how he said it earlier, this time too full, much more encompassing, much more genuine.

Victor can probably tell, too, because he smiles, close-mouthed but so real it hurts to look at.

It’s the kind of smile that makes something in Yuuri’s chest twinge; he thinks of that _look_ on Victor’s face, before Takashima, when he’d seen Yuuri earlier, had reacted with so much wonder, had said _You look beautiful_ like it was a natural thing to say.

Yuuri thinks of all that and wonders how Victor could possibly say that—not when Yuuri looks up at Victor now, the starry sky above him and Victor’s face flushed from senseless running and his eyes lit up by a real smile.

Not when Yuuri looks up at Victor now and thinks there couldn't be possibly be a lovelier sight.

Yuuri isn’t blind to how that realization goes straight to his chest, almost like a sting, but then Victor’s helping him up yet again, his palm now something familiar, so warm Yuuri almost chases it, when Victor lets go.

"I’ll speedwalk-race you to the springs?"

It’s all the warning Yuuri gets before Victor’s shuffling away, smiling all the while.

And Yuuri really can’t help it at all, the part of him that follows without question, smiling, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Yuuri?"

Yuuri’s not really sure how his thoughts started drifting off, but Victor finds him after their bath standing outside his own room, counting beats in his head instead of opening his own door.

The inn is still empty, for the most part, everyone out by the shrine with midnight still yet to hit, and it’s eerie, how quiet the place suddenly is, after days upon days of constant flurry.

He knows Victor must be thinking that, too, by the look on his face.

"It’s going to be like this for the next two days, too," Yuuri tells him, staring down at his feet—blistered indeed, and probably too abused from the day to have been immediately dipped into hot water.

It was hard looking at Victor in the springs, somehow, suddenly, but Victor had let him have his usual silence in the baths. He doesn’t bring up Yuuri’s impulsive hug, and Yuuri doesn’t, either.

It doesn’t really mean it didn’t happen, and that Yuuri’s refusing to think about it.

"Are you sleeping now?" Victor says, still lurking at the end of the hall with Makkachin.

"I’ll _try_ to, yeah—" Yuuri squints at him—and makes out the pillow tucked under one arm. "Why?"

"I thought," Victor says, slow, but somehow restless, "if you weren’t going to sleep yet because of your dreams, I could proofread a bit in your room."

That explains absolutely _nothing_ , from the pillow to having Makkachin with him to Yuuri having a much smaller room not fit at all for quiet professional proofreading when they should both be sleeping.

But Yuuri, for some reason, says; "Sure."

He has no time to regret it, so he just passively watches Makkachin jump on his bed while he digs out a futon for Victor. Victor takes it with a happy hum, lending itself to Yuuri’s suspicions that he was right all along, and Victor was definitely not here to proofread.

He can’t imagine why Victor would choose Yuuri’s floor over his own bed in an old banquet hall, but he plays along, shimmying under his own blankets and sighing contentedly. "Did you really not mean to write while you were here?"

"I didn’t," Victor says, the answer coming quick and without trouble. "But there’s a lot to write about."

Yuuri’s head feels heavy as soon as it hits his pillow, and he strokes Makkachin, spread out beside him, with eyes closed. "Like?"

"Those, I believe, would count as spoilers, Yuuri," Victor says, clucking his tongue for show. "Would you like me to read some parts to you?"

Yuuri cracks one eye open. "You just said it would be spoiler-y."

"There’s a lot to choose from that wouldn’t necessarily be spoilers," Victor tells him, smug. "I wrote quite a bit last night. It’s the only way I can ask to prioritize this over the autobiography deal."

He’s suddenly talking a lot, so openly, too, but Yuuri doesn’t point it out, opening his other eye. "Until the end of the month?"

Victor blinks, surprised, but he nods.

Yuuri nods against his pillow, too, hand settling against Makkachin. "And then you leave?"

Victor nods again, but it’s slower this time. "And then I leave."

"Right," Yuuri says, and it feels like he has to fish out the one word out of a daze, past the cotton in his head and the gauze in his own mouth. He clears his throat, ignoring the thoughtful look he gets from Makkachin. "I, um—I’d like to hear some lines, then."

That earns him the Unlimited Edition Victor Beam, but Yuuri settles into it, settles into the growing familiarity of it—the growing familiarity of Victor, of what he meant before and what he means now, being here, just another human being on the same boat, maybe, as Yuuri is. It feels like the way it did, that evening: like old memories willingly letting go to be replaced by new ones.

Yuuri doesn’t understand anything about the twinge in his chest, sharp and soft and warm and heavy all at the same time, yet insistent, dynamic. But he knows it has to do with Victor—knows that it’s in the way he smiles, the way he makes physical touch so easy for Yuuri, the way he makes words come out easier. It’s in the way it feels seeing him with Yuuri’s mother, the way he looks at Hasetsu like Yuuri has never thought to look at Hasetsu, not just a place to return to, but a place to live in and love.

And the idea of Victor leaving, when there’s only the beginnings of _this_ simmering in, doesn’t fit well against all of it, doesn’t fit well against everything that Yuuri wants to understand first.

But it’s there, like so many other things looming in Yuuri’s future, past his present comprehension, too big to fit into a heart already too small to fit anything else after years of being carved out.

He snuggles against Makkachin, though, waves all of it away, if only because Victor clears his throat and starts reading, and his voice is a song Yuuri could learn, could transcribe into his own head, because it’s the only thing that feels appropriately representative of how he feels, listening to Victor, being around Victor.

So he closes his eyes and lets it wash over him like a lullaby.

For the first time in weeks, he falls, easy and comfortable, into dreamless sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When he wakes up, Makkachin is there, but Victor is not.

The futon has been folded up neatly, though, and Yuuri doesn’t think too much of it, dismisses it as Victor having gone back to his own room at some point last night.

Checking the time on his bedside tells him it’s 9 A.M, though, much later than he’s been waking up in the past month, and then he’s sitting up, jostling Makkachin.

"Sorry, sorry," he murmurs as he gets out of bed.

Makkachin follows him through his morning routine, from brushing his teeth to changing into something else, disconnected from his usual one now with his morning run out of the question and the hot springs crowded even now with the influx of tourists all trying to beat the crowds themselves.

The last thing Yuuri had been expecting as a change to his morning routine, though, is the sound of Mari’s voice, cooing at someone in the main area, as excited as Victor usually is.

The last thing Yuuri had been expecting was to see Victor seated in front of his breakfast, expression unreadable as he sits across from a new guest, who’s dressed in an alarming tiger-patterned sweater with the hood pulled up.

And this is how Yuuri welcomes the second day of the festival—

—with a glare from Yuri Plisetsky, fifteen-year-old piano prodigy and winner of this year’s International Chopin Competition.

 


	5. for forever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> music:
> 
>   * yurio's _[torrent](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUVCGsWhwHU)_ \- valentina lisitsa
>   * yuuri's _[nocturne op. 48, no. 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSAwZP8e-zQ)_ \- cho seong-jin (though, ironically, this one is from the first stage of the most recent chopin competition. cho went on to bag first place, bless his gifted heart.)
> 


"How many more of these should I put on sticks?"

Yuuri counts four measures in his head, and when he still doesn’t get a reply, he looks up to where Victor’s in the kitchen, poking at frying shrimp tempura with too much contemplation on his face.

One poke, two pokes. Still no reply.

The third day of the festival has somehow landed the two of them in food duty, with Yuuri’s father stationed around the beach area preparing for the fireworks show tonight, and his mother away at the shrine. Mari’s as efficient as ever, and by the time both Victor and Yuuri have woken up that morning, she already had a system in place—Victor’s apparently reliable enough to be trusted in the kitchen, and Yuuri’s reliable enough to be trusted with sitting a meter away in the main area, putting wooden skewers through shrimp and dipping them in batter.

They make good progress as a team, alone in the inn with everyone out ready to celebrate the last day of the Kunchi, but being alone with Victor also means being hyper aware of the differences that’s been there since Yuri Plisetsky had arrived the day before.

As if reading his mind, Victor suddenly jerks into attention. "Yuuri?"

Yuuri pauses halfway through skewering a shrimp. "Yes?"

"What do you think of Yuri—of Yurio?"

Mari had taken an immediate fondness, seeing resemblance to her favorite idol that’s _barely_ there, if Yuuri’s honest, and cheerfully providing a nickname. His own opinion isn’t quite as clear-cut an answer for Yuuri, though, and he has to put the stick down and give it some genuine thought, if only because he has no response to give otherwise.

Victor doesn’t prompt him, just waits it out.

It’s been roughly twenty-eight hours since Yuri Plisetsky had arrived, and he had, in each of those hours, been a fifteen-year-old in all the ways Yuuri has only ever _heard_ of fifteen-year-olds.

He _eats_ , discriminating against nothing, and not quite in the same way Victor is excited about eating anything, either. He’d slept and slept too, relegating Yuuri back to Mari’s room for the night with all the other rooms occupied for the festival and the connecting storage space to Victor’s room needing cleaning before anyone can use it.

Yurio’s crude, edges not just rough but deliberately sharp sometimes, like a hedgehog with its wide spectrum of prickliness.

It’s almost fascinating to watch.

Yesterday, Yuri had seen Yuuri walk in and said, as a greeting; "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

And proceeded to eat the _katsudon_ Mari had laid out for Yuuri.

That’s about the closest they’ve come to a full conversation thus far.

If Victor is a hurricane—encompassing, storm surges and rain—Yuri is a tornado in a porcelain shop, all cyclonic winds bringing everything from rain to sleet to hail, a constantly rotating column of aggression that doesn’t waver even once. It’s the kind of thing that Yuuri sort of just has to smooth through and accept, though the concept of excuses like ‘He’s just a teenager,’ seems foreign to him when applied to such blatant hostility.

But there it is.

Yurio’s a figure preceded almost entirely by his reputation, from good to bad; a piano prodigy, though there is no shortage of that in their world, with a notorious personality that excludes no one, which is a rarity in a field reliant on formalities. He’s the type of competitor people whisper about as he passes, even if he mostly ignores all of them, eyes fixed to music notes only he can hear in his head.

Yuuri himself has never had a single conversation with him, had exchanged nothing more than a handshake at shared concours and galas. Even at the Chopin Competition, he’d paid Yurio no mind past the objective observations—there were worse things to think about, worse things to _be_ , at the time—so he’s sure he hadn’t done anything wrong, at least nothing personal, to warrant the way Yurio looks at him like Yuuri had directly and exclusively wronged him.

And he _does_ look. He looks and stares and glares, mouth opening and closing as if he’s about to point out _why_ he looks at Yuuri like that, only to choke on it and end up saying something as unexpectedly appalling.

Victor, for the most part, seems used to it, expression not even twitching every time Yurio opens his mouth; though his smile turns tight, sometimes, not noticeable for anyone else to see, but tight enough for Yuuri, who’s starting to catalogue every new smile he sees on Victor.

There _is_ fondness there, no doubt, but it’s mixed with something else, constrained.

Victor hadn’t said anything, had offered no explanation nor demanded one, before volunteering to clean out the storage space for Yurio himself.

Like it’s not even a question, that Yurio would be staying, too.

There’s something amidst all of this that Yuuri is missing, and it’s the kind of missing piece that itches, claws at a brain that only caught up with sleep the night before.

So it’s with complete sincerity that Yuuri admits, even after long beats of thought; "I don’t… know."

Victor doesn’t seem surprised by that answer at all, gesturing for Yuuri to bring over this new batch of skewers. Except he keeps his arms outstretched the entire time, waiting until Yuuri’s placed the tray on the counter before throwing an arm around Yuuri’s shoulder, whining.

Something about their unspoken agreement on physical touch had shifted, after the first night of the festival, and it doesn’t come with embarrassment now, the knowledge that Victor’s touching him. He’s flustered, but it’s not uncomfortable, not something he wants to move away from; just something familiar now.

And a little bit like something he wants to move closer to.

He allows himself to lean back slightly, clearing his throat. "What is it?"

A more pointed whine. "Yuuri, I’m _tired_."

His question about Yurio dropped, just like that.

Yuuri hates his body for having to shiver at the proximity, but he’s as quick to look over his shoulder and frown at Victor. "You said you could handle cooking."

"I am a _guest_ ," Victor points out, resting his forehead against Yuuri’s shoulder so he doesn’t have to face the frown.

"You don’t mean that," Yuuri murmurs, because Victor doesn’t.

Yuuri’s only learning the slight changes that happens in Victor’s face whenever something occurs, but he knows enough, he thinks, to be able to notice Victor’s eyes brightening whenever he’s treated like an extension of the family. He’s always watching Yuuri’s father interact with inn regulars on drinking nights, something akin to childish curiosity in his eyes, but it’s turned into something sunnier now that Yuuri’s mother’s learned to both scold and coo at Victor, whichever one the situation calls for.

But noticing that Victor is almost done carving his place into Yu-topia also means noticing the contrast with what was there before. Yuuri doesn’t know if he’d call it loneliness, the emotion that passes through Victor’s face before something brighter takes over, defeating it. It’s not even something noticeable until it’s _not_ there anymore, giving way to fondness in response to Yuuri’s _mother_ ’s own fondness, or some product of whatever odd rapport Victor has going on with Mari and Minako-sensei.

It has to be pretty close to loneliness, though, because it’s not a good look on Victor’s face, the way anything that isn’t contemplation or enthusiasm always looks out-of-place on Victor.

It feels like taking something away from Victor, when the expression on his face gets too heavy.

Still, Yuuri finds himself asking; "The person—that you were talking to on the phone—the other day. Is Yurio—is Yurio the Yuri that—"

When Victor’s surprised, it doesn’t always show on his face, but there’s a half-beat that comes before his words do, noticeable to someone whose ears are primed for the littlest difference between each new sound.

It’s what happens now, a half note before Victor raises his head from Yuuri’s shoulder and says; "He’s here to make sure I’m being productive and not cheating my way into a vacation."

Yuuri frowns again. "But you told _me_ you were on vacation."

Victor’s smile comes back sheepish. "That’s not what I told my agent."

"Right—oh." Yuuri’s mouth falls open into an _o._ It’s such a childish thing to do, in retrospect, like lying to a parent about staying over at a friend’s house for a study group night, except this is Victor running away to the other side of the world for a change of scenery and having to pretend he’s doing work.

Yuuri thinks neither he nor Victor really had a stereotypical teenage life, but the mental image of Victor sneaking off because he doesn’t want to face writing his autobiography is—

"Yuuri," Victor says, face too close as he leans to peer into Yuuri’s face. "You keep laughing at me nowadays."

"I’m not laughing." Yuuri turns away, shies away from Victor’s breaching of personal space—and to hide the fact that he _is_ smiling, something warm in his chest at the thought of Victor being so single-minded about this, that even he can feel that way, though his methods remain so Victor-esque.

"Yes, you are," Victor protests, whine high in his syllables.

"I’m _not_ ," Yuuri insists, reaching a finger up to poke Victor away—only for Victor to catch his hand, smiling now, too, like Yuuri had brought him into the joke.

That’s what being around Victor is like now, Yuuri has realized; where before it was warmth and magnetism, it’s like being part of a private joke now, just between them, unspoken communication and the urge to smile always there even without saying anything. What tension there is never lasts, like that, because Victor always manages to coax it out of Yuuri.

It’s the kind of bubble that he has with Mari, he thinks. With Yuuko and Nishigori. With Phichit. The undercurrent of something shared—family, childhood, everyday life—working its way into the bare bones of his interaction with someone.

It’s a very new thing, when applied to someone who was never at any point even a candidate for being in a bubble with Yuuri.

His contemplation must show on his face, because Victor blinks, tilting his face in question.

Before he can ask, though, there’s a clatter behind them.

They both jerk into attention, looking up to see Yurio standing in the doorway of the kitchen.

He looks far too awake for someone they know for a fact just woke up from yet another nap, narrowing his eyes at Victor’s arms around Yuuri.

"I knew it," he mutters.

Victor doesn’t even twitch behind him, much less let him go. Yuuri blinks. "Knew wh—"

Yurio doesn’t let him finish, holding something up to cut him off—a pile of a lot of somethings, haphazardly spread out between Yurio’s hands like some A4-size card deck.

Yuuri squints at it for a while, before making out the second page to _Salut D’Amour_ , thrown in amongst blank sheets he’s been playing with for the self-composition.

He untangles himself from Victor, who finally seems to remember he has shrimp tempura to _not_ burn, though Yuuri feels eyes on him as he walks over to Yurio, keeping his smile mild.

"I’m just working on some stuff," Yuuri says, tugging on one sheet to free it from Yurio’s grasp.

Yurio narrows his eyes even further. "You’re writing?"

The question could be directed at either him or Victor, but Yurio’s glare stays on Yuuri, who has to fumble for a reply; "Um—I’m—Trying it out?"

"And this?" Yurio waves the _Salut D’Amour_ pages, crinkling the edges. Yuuri feels vaguely like he’d missed a cue in this conversation, not quite sure what he said to warrant the way Yurio’s looking at him like _this_ offends his very soul. "What are you doing playing with _Elgar_?"

He spits it out the way New York coffee shop regulars spit out mainstream artist names, like he won’t be caught dead listening to it—and Yuuri shouldn’t be, either.

Thinking about it that way renders it slightly amusing, and Yuuri’s small smile turns genuine as he takes the _Salut D’Amour_ booklet, too. "Friends of mine are getting married by the end of the month," he explains. "And I agreed to play at the wedding."

Yurio just keeps his eyes narrowed.

Yuuri’s beginning to be convinced that’s a permanent state alongside the furrow in his eyebrows. "I didn’t choose the piece," he hurries to add, because he feels like he should. "But I like it. It’s a good piece."

It is; Yuuri looks at the notes now without the intimidation that used to come with it, when the nuances of the song remained unfamiliar and its warmth unwelcome after all the heavy playing Yuuri has been doing in the last five years. But he’s starting to give himself to it, to let it welcome him instead of forcing himself to welcome it.

It’s starting to become knowable, too, in ways Yuuri still hasn’t allowed himself to think about too much.

Yurio is quiet for too long, and Yuuri is about to take it as agreement, but then Yurio snatches the booklet out of Yuuri’s hands, browsing through it so fast there’s no way he’s actually going through the music in his head. He lets go of the rest of the sheets he’s holding at the same time, and they scatter around them on the floor.

"Why," Yurio says, irritated, "are you wasting your time on this?"

Yuuri blinks. "Um—"

"What the fuck is going on in your head," Yurio continues, without lifting his eyes from _Salut D’Amour_ , "that you would come to the middle of nowhere after doing so shit at the Chopin Competition? And then _waste_ your damn time on _this_ , and—" He steps on top of the nearest sheet he can find on the floor, grinding his heel against it. It’s not much of an act, considering that Yurio’s wearing the _onsen_ ’s fuzzy slippers, but Yuuri still winces. "— _that_."

Yurio looks like he wants to strangle something, his hands clenching and unclenching insistently and crumpling the sheets in the process. He doesn’t look _angry_ , exactly, but it’s a near thing, irritation scrunching up his face so badly that Yuuri feels like he should sit him down and get him a glass of water.

He’s still not really sure what he did to set him off. "Yurio—"

Yurio’s groan starts low in his throat, guttural and resembling a growl, until it rips out as a near scream, throwing Yuuri’s sheet to the floor and stomping out of the kitchen without another word—nor an explanation.

So, robotic, Yuuri turns to Victor for one.

But Victor just stares at the sheets on the floor before looking up at the place where Yurio had been just seconds ago. "Wow."

"Is he—" Yuuri throws his hands up, conveying nothing in particular. "Is he always like that?"

There’s a muddled expression on Victor’s face that Yuuri’s mind is panicking too much to parse—and especially not when an audible clang rings out through the main area.

Then silence.

"He left," Yuuri says, disbelieving. "He _left_. Has he been to Hasetsu before?"

Victor shakes his head.

"What?" Yuuri wrings his own hands. " _What?_ Does he know where to go?"

"He probably doesn’t," Victor replies, ever helpful.

Yuuri’s brain is running a mile a minute now—what if Yurio gets lost in the crowds and they never find him, what if Yuuri becomes indirectly responsible for the disappearance of a _child_ , what if people think he sabotaged Yurio because he won the Chopin Competition, what if this is how Yuuri’s career _ends_ —

"Should someone go after him?" he asks, a little shrill.

Neither of them move.

"Should I—" Yuuri shifts in place, feet restless as more seconds tick by. "Should _I_ go do it?"

But he takes in the tempura Victor still has to strain, the next batch he _still_ has to cook by the fireworks display tonight, and Yuuri doesn’t wait for an answer—he’s already skidding out of the kitchen by the time Victor opens his mouth—

And out of the house with his jacket barely on before he himself can even complete a rational thought about the situation.

 

 

 

 

 

Yuuko is a godsend.

Yuuri’s been wandering around blocks for half an hour when he gets the text, his phone returned now that Victor’s apparently done avoiding phone calls.

It’s twenty minutes more of squeezing through crowds and passing through shortcuts he didn’t even realize he remembers before he actually gets to Yurio. Yuuko had found him idling around Hasetsu Castle after she’d closed the library early for the day, and, unsurprisingly kind enough to listen to apparent protests not to take him back to Yu-topia, took him to Minako’s studio.

It’s Minako who opens the door for him, expression strained the way it is when her attention is occupied by a bunch of things all at once.

Yurio’s playing—playing the piece he won the competition with, each note loud in the empty studio. Minako waves him forward, impatient, to his usual practice room, where he finds Yurio, bent over the piano with a scowl.

It’s impossible to mistake Chopin’s _Etude Op. 10, No. 4_ for anything else, and especially not Yuri Plisetsky’s version of it; his take on _Torrent_ feels faster than anything Yuuri has ever heard, near breathless, closing around you until it becomes suffocating, holding tight around the neck as it drowns you into asphyxiation. It’s fiery, the feeling of someone chasing after you, close on your heels, and looking back at it now, seeing Yurio play it on the last stage of the competition had been that feeling personified, embodied in the boy sitting on that stool, fingers a blur.

_Russian Punk._ _Fairy._ There’s no shortage of names that more tasteless critics use to show disdain for Yurio’s attitude. But what they seem to be missing between those is the wizardry in the kind of music Yurio can pull off, as soon as he gets on stage and shuts everything else down.

It’s easy to tell that Yurio’s main strength is his focus, his singleminded-ness when the situation calls for it. It’s a matter of concentration for him, being onstage, not the way it is for Yuuri—a gamble each time, a matter of wrestling his own heart into falling in step to the beats of a metronome, of having to internally shake himself back into focus in the middle of a song, cutting off his own thoughts to ask himself, _Where was I?_

Yurio looks up for a half-beat, a quick staccato of a key, but enough for him to spot Yuuri—and to stop playing, just like that.

Yuuri musters up a panicked smile. "Hi."

Yurio’s eyes slit towards him, feral in the way rabid kittens are feral. "What?"

His accent is prominent, more distinct than Victor’s, and it falls like thunderclap on Yuuri’s ears. Down the hall, a substantial distance away, Minako sighs, the sigh of a mother raising three teenage boys—which she is definitely not—and the sound echoes in the entire hallway.

But Yurio doesn’t look apologetic, nor shamed, just glares with the intensity of an angry rhapsody.

That kind of predictability makes him, however, very easy to read, even for someone like Yuuri, who doesn’t make a habit out of it when other things clog his head.

Yuuri waves a hand, trying for friendly and getting aimless instead, a poor attempt at dissipating tension he doesn’t even know the cause of. "Yuuko said you two met," he says, keeping his voice as light as he can. He feels like he’s tiptoeing around a sleeping baby, except the sleeping baby is a professional Classical pianist, too. "She’s a fan."

The surliness doesn’t fade. "Why the hell do you look like that?"

Yuuri blinks. "Sorry?"

"Spit it out," Yurio says, which is ironic when he’s the one spitting his own words out. "You have something to say. Let’s hear it."

Yuuri exchanges a look with Minako, leaning against the wall at the end of the hall now. She’s watching him, something just short of expectant in her expression, and he sighs, stepping into the room. He doesn’t close the door behind him, just leans on the wall there, awkward—but not intimidated at all, somehow, by Yurio’s narrowed eyes.

Yuuri brings to mind Celestino, too, the way he shakes his head when something about a run-through doesn’t sit well with him, clucking his tongue in disapproval. "I think you get excited," he begins, quiet, restless. "You get off-speed because you’re trying to make up for having to use your left hand more. The regularity suffers because the transition from wide to narrow hand positions get awkward. You should use your thumbs more on the black keys. Learn to relax—"

Yurio’s expression has gotten progressively darker while Yuuri was speaking, and he should probably have stopped—but it’s too late now. "I will not take a lecture about technique from you." Yurio’s jaw is tense, irritated, and his right hand clenched into a fist. "I have the skill."

Yurio _does_ have the skill, has it on a more innate level than Yuuri had at his age, but still. "I think a little more of the precision can’t hurt," Yuuri says, hesitant. He scrambles, wondering what all his other teachers would say, what kind of notes Phichit would leave for himself. Minako doesn’t show up to save him, either, and he keeps fumbling. "Or more emotion, for that matter—you can’t make up for the subtleties of Chopin with power and strength—"

"It is what the sheet _says_." Yurio grits his teeth. "I do not play to entertain a crowd."

Yuuri frowns, opens his mouth—to say what, he’s not sure, because Yurio plunges on.

"At the Chopin Competition, your form got sloppy, you fucked up when you went too fast your fingers slipped, you _gave_ up by the end, just fucking—smashing down on the keys without care for the score—" He says, voice a steady rhythm for words so sharp. " _That’s_ what you get for relaxing. I am not like you. There is such a thing as too much emotion, and that is what you are." 

The implication is there, brash; _You’ll be a decent player if you just weren’t so emotional_. 

Yuuri doesn’t have a response to that. 

_Given up,_ is what Yurio said.

It isn’t the right term for it.

Once upon a time, three weeks ago, Yuuri might have thought it was, but it doesn’t feel right anymore, doesn’t feel like that’s what he did, in the third stage of the competition.

Yuuri doesn’t have a response, mostly, maybe, because Yurio’s right. Yuuri _does_ feel too much, too frequently during performances, too latched on to his head to give in to the music, too busy either counting his notes and his beats to really give into it, or too busy being so lost in other things to focus the way Yurio does.

But Yurio makes Yuuri’s emotions sound like sloppy things, unnecessary to music.

Yuuri considers his emotions, each and every one—things he can't understand, but things that fill him up anyway. He imagines what it will be like to not feel—except he can't. It's an empty thought, an empty feeling. 

He thinks of _Salut D’Amour_ , of its quiet emotion, the soft love in it, shaky at first but growing steady, sure, unwavering. It _consumes_ , and for Yuuri, whose goal has always been to embody, but not to give in—because it’s scary, to accept feelings when it’s so easy to be consumed by emotion—it’s a difficult paradox.

_Salut D’Amour_ and everything it stands for, then, is a stark contrast to Yuuri’s own final piece for the Chopin competition.

If _Salut D’Amour_ is infused with soft, quiet, vulnerable love, _Nocturne Op. 48 No. 1_ is a piece overflowing with grief, tucked into every bar, every measure, every staff. Where _Salut D’Amour_ is the yellow sun rays of a quiet morning, the nocturne is darkness with thick curtains pulled closed.

It’s all the days and nights spent homesick the first few months in New York, all the corners he’d sat in, knees drawn to his chest, his chest heavy but with nothing to trigger tears that would, at least, provide catharsis. It’s all the meals missed for the sake of practice, practice, practice, the promise of validation and victory that keeps staying out of reach because he keeps having to be reminded he’s achingly and painfully human. It’s all the disappointment and hurt and homesickness, all the things he can’t put a name to, all the things that makes his chest and stomach hurt. It was grief for the things he hasn’t been able to do, to accomplish, and the weight of it all, crashing down on him in a performance that should have meant more than it ended up being.

It’s a very vulnerable thing, being up there, to sit on that piano in Warsaw, barely recognizing himself from the pile-up of emotion suddenly provoked by this one piece—it’s like stripping down to the very bones of what made him _him_ , what made him Katsuki Yuuri, son and brother to family he hasn’t seen in five years, friend and student to people who support him regardless of whether he deserves it, and what made him a pianist, subject to the music, after all.

It was just _so_ much, and Yuuri knows Yurio is right, when he says there had been too much emotion there.

But it’s the only way Yuuri knows how to play, because music is the one time he doesn’t have to make sense of everything he’s feeling, the one time he doesn’t have to work around anxiety and insecurities knowing full well the extent of his irrationality and yet being unable to do _anything_ about it. It's either thinking or feeling so much, unfiltered.

It’s just him and the piano, him and the music, their own little bubble.

"The score isn’t the be-all and end-all—you know," he finally says, the words coming up raspy through a dry throat. "A human being wrote that. A human being wrote emotions into that."

He feels the need to huff out a small nervous laugh right after, but it’s mostly an attempt to get Yurio to stop looking at him like Yuuri’s digging his own grave deeper and deeper every time they interact.

It’s not a very successful attempt.

"People were rooting for you from the first stage," Yurio says. It’s not disdain in his voice, nor contempt, just a disgust that has nothing to do with Yuuri as a pianist, but Yuuri as a person. "But you messed it all up. And now you’re here, playing _wedding_ songs and writing pieces you should have written two years _ago_ —"

"Tell me," Yuuri interrupts. He doesn’t mean to say it, but it cuts through Yurio’s words. "Tell me what else I should have done."

There’s silence in the room, automatic. It’s silent out in the hallway, too, not a word from Minako.

And then Yurio, irritable; "That’s not an answer anyone else can give you, is it? Figure it out yourself." He turns to properly face Yuuri, pinning him in place with a glare. "Or just give up and retire."

He’d considered it, in some distant, senseless bout of questioning on the flight back to Japan. He’d thought it through, had been, at one point, almost sure of it—but he’ll be lying if he said it didn’t pain him to think about it. _That_ feels like giving up. To give up piano now would be like giving up language altogether because he couldn’t find the right words for one concept. To give up piano now would be to give up all the days and nights, all the blood, sweat and tears that went into it, and all those emotions that came with it.

Yurio, Yuuri thinks, underestimates how many more days and night _he_ ’s spent slaving over the piano. How much longer Yuuri’s history with the piano is. It would be like giving up a portion of his life, one he cannot function without. Because for all that it’s hard, for all that it’s painful and disappointing, for all that it makes him feel too much, for all that he has to make peace with it and himself every time—it would be even worse, to not have it.

Piano is an old friend, the oldest of friends, an extension of him. It’s a love unconditional at this point.

Leaving it, the way he is right now, is not an option.

He says as much. "That’s not something I can do, Yurio."

Yurio’s eyes are icy when they meet Yuuri’s. "Then what _can_ you do?"

It’s such a simple question, so straightforward of Yurio. It’s that which it always boils down, and it’s that which Yuuri still hasn’t figured out. "That’s what I’m trying to find out."

Yurio’s expression, for a second, falters—surprise, maybe, confusion, too fast for Yuuri to pinpoint. Then he scoffs, slamming the fallboard down so hard on the keys that it makes Yuuri wince. "Where have I heard that bullshit before," he mutters. "Both of you are the same. Get your lives together. Stop asking questions when the answer is staring you right in the face."

With that, he walks out of the room—stomps, more like, or maybe Yurio just walks like that by virtue of being him. Yuuri stares at the piano while he goes, confusion too stuck in his head to make it out in the form of words, and when he looks up at the doorway, Minako’s there, appraising Yuuri with relative regard.

"Not bad," she says, when Yuuri just stares back. "I guess the past five years taught you a thing or two."

She doesn’t sound wistful, because Minako-sensei never sounds wistful, but Yuuri takes the approval for what it is, though he’s not really sure what he did or said to warrant it.

"But—" Minako says, holding up a finger in the middle of turning away from Yuuri. "The brat’s right. It’s okay to want things. Figure other things out first—" She steps back towards Yuuri, waving a hand, before using an index finger to lightly poke his chest. "—and the rest will sort itself out. Stop looking _in_ when you can’t find the answer there. There are other places. Even the fifteen-year-old kid knows that."

It’s an echo of what Celestino said. _You look in the wrong places_.

But it’s hard to look outwards, hard to look anywhere else but in, when he’s spent so long huddling in into himself.

Minako’s already turning away again, waving him forward. "Let’s go, let’s go. Let’s not keep your second guest waiting. Everyone should be set up along the beach now."

She grins over her shoulder at him, mischievous but her eyes are understanding, steady in the way Minako-sensei has always, always been.

"But man, our Yuuri-kun sure is popular."

 

 

 

 

Yuuko and Nishigori join them at some point—mostly for Nishigori to poke fun at Yuuri’s dazed expression, and for Yuuko to work her socializing magic on Yurio, who has thawed considerably by the time they get to the beach.

There’s already a significant crowd around the small tents set up, and not even Yurio can hide his curiosity. Yuuri sees him nudge Yuuko to grudgingly ask something, but before he can make out the question, there’s a warm weight on his back, and familiar arms wrapping around his shoulder, pulling him close and _squeezing_.

" _Yuuri,"_ Victor says, sounding wounded. "You were gone for _so_ long."

It’s probably been two hours at most, but Yuuri doesn’t say anything, just lets himself be hugged, unsure of what to do with his hands. Physical touch with Victor might be familiar now, but reciprocation is still uncharted waters, as well as the nuances of actively dealing with physical contact, especially when it’s so constant and steady.

Victor doesn’t search him for immediate reciprocation, as if content to just be allowed to do as he wants, even if Yuuri’s not really sure what’s so appealing about always having a hand on him.

The warmth is appreciated, though—human interactions seem so different, when coupled with the feeling of that person’s touch.

When Yuuri finally disentangles himself, hoping his disappointment at the cold that replaces Victor doesn’t show on his face, his friends, Minako and Yurio are all gone. Yuuri spots them farther down the beach, Minako in conversation with Yuuri’s parents, and Yuuko introducing Yurio to the different fillings available for _taiyaki_.

"Did you talk to Yurio okay?"

Yuuri blinks, taking his time looking up at Victor. "Define okay."

Victor laughs, smile easy. It’s a good look on him, and it’s strange to see that that’s different. Different from the way he’d smiled, his first week here. This one’s unthinking, a knee-jerk reaction the way a real amused smile should be.

It makes Yuuri smile, too. "Did you cook the tempura okay?"

Victor widens his smile back. "Define okay."

Yuuri’s laugh is startled out of him, and he has to follow up by half-heartedly rolling his eyes. "I’m sure you did perfectly," he says. "Even if you didn’t, my mom thinks you can do no wrong."

So does most of the rest of the world, probably, and it’s not anything new to him, but Victor beams, still. "Does she really?"

"Don’t act like you don’t know," Yuuri mutters, looking away because that’s one thing that hasn’t gotten easier, meeting Victor’s beams head-on. "My whole family loves you."

The crowd is thickening around them, and it’s making Yuuri feel vaguely suffocated, somehow. He toes off his shoes, picking them up before he steps out of direct gunning range of the people starting to pile around the stalls. It brings him closer to the water, sand finer under his feet, and he turns back to find Victor doing the same, no questions asked.

Without having to meet his eyes, it’s easier for Yuuri to add; "The whole city loves you, really."

It's an accepted fact, a seamless result of Victor being Victor in a place like Hasetsu.

"I think love is an exaggeration," Victor says, mild, even if he clearly doesn’t believe his own accusation. He follows after Yuuri easily—

—only to switch his shoes over to another hand so he can take Yuuri’s free hand with the other.

He offers a smile, conspiratorial. "I don’t want to get lost."

But his grip stays loose, giving Yuuri the option to retract his hand without having to tug.

Yuuri doesn’t.

He swallows instead, looking away. "I really don’t think you’ll get lost," he says, voice shaky. He clears his throat. "And it’s not an exaggeration."

"What do you—" Victor says, but when Yuuri looks back up again at him, he stops short, question abandoned.

He smiles, tugging at Yuuri’s hand until Yuuri brings them both forward, their arms swinging, and it should be awkward, should be awkward to hold someone’s hand, hold _Victor_ ’s hand, of all people. But it isn’t. It’s too hot, the space between their bodies, and Yuuri can’t concentrate on anything but a sudden pinch in his stomach and the way his own palm fits against Victor’s, but it’s not awkward.

It’s a paralyzing notion, though, to ask himself why it isn't.

"In that case," Victor says, picking up a new train of thought altogether. "I love this place, too."

Yuuri wants to say something back, but he still can’t _focus_. He doesn’t even understand why he can’t; this is infinitely smaller than being hugged by Victor so casually, and yet he can’t tear a single thought away from Victor’s hand around his, their fingers not even entwined. Just holding.

Victor’s either pretending not to notice Yuuri’s erratic heartbeat, or just plainly and thankfully oblivious, because he continues on, lightly swinging their arms as they walk. "They love you, too, you know."

"My family?" Yuuri thinks of Mari sitting in front of him, face and voice imploring, words clear. "Or the city?"

Victor blinks down at him. "Both. Is there a difference?" He shrugs, one-shouldered. "It’s a welcoming place, Hasetsu. No wonder so many people come here."

"That’s just the festival," Yuuri says, managing to sound _not_ shaky now, heartbeat finding its regular rhythm again. "It’s not—it’s not usually this crowded. Hardly anyone really comes, unless it’s for the Kunchi.It will be back to usual within the—next two days?"

Back to sleepy, quiet and still little Hasetsu. The Hasetsu of Yuuri’s childhood.

The Hasetsu he thought of, for some reason, when he’d played his last piece at the Chopin competition.

Victor’s expression has shuttered into something thoughtful, provoked by something Yuuri said but still unreadable, and Yuuri almost feels bad, when he blurts out; "Did you always want to be a writer?"

It takes Victor two whole seconds to trace the question back to Yuuri. For a moment, Yuuri thinks he’ll get an evasive answer, but then Victor shakes his head, genuine. "No," he says. Then, as thoughtful as he looks; "Don’t ask me what I _did_ want to be. I’m afraid I don’t have an answer."

"Oh," is Yuuri’s only reply.

"I don’t mean to say I dislike it, though," Victor says. It’s near imperceptible, but his hand tightens a little around Yuuri’s. "It’s a validating experience, writing stories. The world makes so much more sense when you have the words to describe every little thing."

It’s an out-of-place statement when said to someone like Yuuri, who feels things too big and too all-encompassing to be described with words, especially ones he does not have. He’s a performer at heart, and it’s within him primarily to show, to express, to convey everything he can’t with words.

"But it’s not very fun," Victor says, voice low, "when you don’t even have questions to find answers to."

Yuuri frowns. "I don’t understand," he mumbles.

That eases the expression on Victor’s face; Yuuri hadn’t even realized, how tense it had gotten. Not so much vulnerable as just unsure, like he’s not quite sure what he’s about to say. It’s a familiar feeling.

"I think," Victor starts, slow, careful, "that every story starts with a question, Yuuri. Not an answer. A life without questions isn't much of a life at all, I don't think. No one’s life is so set in stone and so smooth-going that there wouldn’t be questions."

It sounds, to Yuuri, like an excuse for justifying how unfair life can be—but then again, he doesn’t know what it’s like, to not place the burden on his shoulders to justify everything he does wrong, as if, somehow, if he just kept looking inside himself, he’ll find a reason for everything that’s gone wrong, and take responsibility for it.

But there’s a longing in Victor’s voice that’s familiar, too, a scale his fingers are used to playing. 

"So," Victor continues, off-beat, like he doesn’t even mean to continue talking. "When something or someone starts making you ask yourself questions you've never thought of asking before—it's the beginning of something else. A new chapter, a new story. When it's worth finding an answer for. When it's worth finding the words for."

He finishes off with a slight smile, directed at Yuuri but a little out of scale. "I’m a very simple person, you see. Curiosity killed the cat, they say. I don’t listen very often."

It sounds very much like he’s talking to himself, and he shakes himself out of it, noticing Yuuri’s staring and widening his smile. It’s genuine enough, but the mild twinge in Yuuri’s chest doesn’t go. 

"I envy you that, Yuuri," Victor says, hushed. Private. "You hate ennui, don’t you? You get restless about not doing anything, about sitting around doing nothing."

Yuuri blinks.

"You want things," Victor says, swinging his other arm now, too, like they’re talking about anything but what is, essentially, the things the got them where they are, in Hasetsu, unsure where they’ll be in a months’ time. "You get frustrated, you think a lot, because you want things. Your mind’s always going off, off, off. People can always tell. It’s a joy to watch and be around." He pauses. "Envy isn’t the right word. Admire, I think." 

Yuuri feels like he’s being allowed entry into Victor’s head—but it’s a weird feeling, to be the topic in question, to be the one being discussed, dissected in all the ways Yuuri hadn’t realized Victor had been observing in him.

It sounds like a different person, too.

And yet not at all.

"Would you ever—" Yuuri swallows. "Would you stop writing, if there were other options?"

"There are always options, aren’t there?" Victor doesn’t sound like he means that, but his pause is considering. "I wonder. I like it too much, I think. Playing creator for a little while. It helps me make sense of things I can’t make sense of in myself."

That strikes Yuuri as a sudden, too personal thing to say. 

Victor knows it, too, probably, but he doesn’t take it back. "You wouldn’t quit music, either, would you?"

Without having to think about it, Yuuri shakes his head.

Victor cracks a knowing smile. "I thought so. It will be a lonely way to live, no?" 

He says this with so much certainty that Yuuri knows it's a rehearsed line, turned over his head to categorize the feeling. That's what he’d thought, too, in the kitchen. That there was a lonely quality to Victor. 

"Lonely," Yuuri repeats, tasting the word. 

He’d thought that, too, on the flight back to Hasetsu. He’d figured it would be such a painfully lonely thing, to give up piano, to give up a companion. But hearing Victor say it, hear the rise and dip of the way he pronounces it, intimate to himself, it doesn’t feel right, to Yuuri.

Lonely means being alone. Solitary. No one to care for him, no one to keep him company. 

Completely and utterly alone.

Pensive, Yuuri looks over his shoulder—at the tents in the near distance now, all the people crowded around it. Somewhere in one of those are his parents, Mari, Minako. Somewhere along that line of tents and street festival foods he still remembers from his childhood is Yurio, with Yuuko and Nishigori, trying some of those things out for the first time. 

This is his eighteenth Kunchi here in Hasetsu, and yet it feels like today’s the first time he’s understanding what all these people see, when they flock back every year.

Like today’s the first time he’s understanding what Victor sees, when he gets so excited, when he says things like, "You live in paradise, Yuuri." 

Like he’s understanding why people make such a big deal out of looking outwards instead of in, when it’s warmth like this, mixed with nostalgia and the promise of simplicity, that greets them.

_Lonely_ would have fell in perfectly, once upon a time, maybe even recently—but it doesn’t now because, maybe, lonely means _alone_ , and it doesn’t seem to be a word Yuuri identifies with, nowadays. It’s not loneliness when, even if he gives up piano, he’ll have his family. He’ll have Minako-sensei and his childhood friends. He’ll have Phichit, even if. It’s not truly alone, the way Yuuri has always thought it would feel like, when he finally, inevitably hit rock bottom.

"Yuuri." Victor’s voice, gentle, coaxing Yuuri to look up at him. "You’re shaking."

"Just—" _Thinking_ , he means to say, but Victor’s leaning in too close, trying to read too much of Yuuri’s face.

"Lonesome," he says, instead. "It would be lonesome."

_Lonesome_ isn’t a physical loneliness—it’s emotional, it crawls in deep, helpless. It’s separation from the things that _are_ filling your life, though they exist. That would be what it’s like, if he gave up piano. The knowledge that his life isn’t empty, by any other standards, and yet still feel like it _is_ , anyway, because that one thing is missing. 

As soon as he says it, though, the syllables thankful for release, almost, it clicks for Yuuri. 

It clicks, staring up at Victor’s face, that it’s the expression that was on Victor’s face, when Yuuri first saw him here. It had been easy to identify being _lost,_ because Yuuri _knew_ what that looked on an uncertain face. But the rest of it—the occasional contemplation, the reflective turn to the mouth—it’s lonesomeness, etched on Victor’s face like notes freely scattered on a staff without a key signature.

He lifts a hand to Victor’s face—and almost laughs, when it surprises Victor. The irony of it all, when Yuuri’s the one that has to get used to _his_ constant touch.

He brushes his thumb against Victor’s cheek, not really thinking, mind not so much blank but at rest. 

Victor’s so close, so touchable, so much nearer than Yuuri ever dreamed would actually happen, and he wants—he wants to—

He doesn’t even get to finish his thought before the first of the fireworks go off, right behind Victor.

They both flinch, Yuuri more so, jerking away, and he doesn’t get to read what flickers through Victor’s face before Victor’s turning away, already gasping. 

He doesn’t let go of Yuuri’s hand, still.

Yuuri really, really wants to watch the fireworks, he does—but he can’t look away from Victor, face lit up by each new burst of light in the sky, every ray reflected in the water and in Victor’s eyes. It should remind Yuuri of all the things that Victor stands for, that starry-eyed embodiment of inspiration that he was, still is, by virtue of childhood nostalgia, but instead he really just sees Victor, who smells faintly of tempura batter underneath the usual cologne, who stands with his feet planted solidly on the sand like he’d walked this so many other times before, as much as Yuuri has.

Now Victor’s just part of this place Yuuri used to call home. 

This place he’s learning to call home once again.

"I wish I didn’t have to leave." 

It’s so quiet Yuuri almost misses it, but Victor’s face crinkles a bit, sheepish, and Yuuri knows for sure he didn’t imagine it. "You don’t have to," he wants to say, but it’s a childish sentiment. 

He hears Phichit’s voice, curious from all those days back; _His radio show’s went on hiatus two weeks ago, and he’s been inactive online since the last leg of his European tour_ —

There will be press conferences, too, after the new book. Other things to worry about that extend past Yuuri’s worries over the self-composition concert. It’s a longer timeline, so many responsibilities, a more defined life outside of Hasetsu whereas Yuuri has always anchored himself to the idea of this city.

So he opts for the simple truth, as bare as he can make it. "You’re always welcome here. Whenever."

Victor’s surprise shouldn’t _be_ there, but it is, like he’d forgotten the prospect of returning is a thing, once he’s left the place.

Yuuri doesn’t blame him when he's equally guilty.

He watches a smile bloom on Victor’s face, the small, sincere smile he reserves for when words are taking too long to come, unable to help his own expression. "Then I’m thankful," he eventually says, repeating; "I love this place." 

He says it with so much sincerity, with so much more _heart_ than Yuuri has allowed himself in the last five years for fear that he’ll miss it too much, that it weighs heavy, to hear him.

But one of them always has the words, simple, and it isn’t Yuuri. 

Growing up, people told Yuuri he was a quiet kid, unassuming, diligent. He never pestered for unpredictable things, never had any particular rebellious streaks. They said he didn’t want for impossible things, that he was an easy child to take care of, if the stubbornness came later on, when he’d learned. 

Now, he thinks they might be mistaken. 

He wants. He’s always wanted, just never articulated to himself because it was too much, to have to deal with the fallout of wanting and never getting. It was just something felt, stamped down when it _is_ too impossible, cursed when he feels like he’d set his own expectations too high. 

Putting words to it _does_ make it more real, and things are easier, when they’re abstract, when you didn’t have to sort through them directly.

But this want is simple: to be able to preserve this moment, to remember it, words or not. The fireworks in the sky, the smell of fried street food and the clamor of excited crowds behind him, and Victor in front of him, hand in his.

He lets himself feel the greed for it, to keep this.

He holds it close in his chest, allowing himself to feel it, and when he breathes out, he does feel like he’s had a question answered, though he’s not sure what it is.

Whatever it is, though, it has him sliding his hand down Victor’s, entwining their fingers together to say, with all the warm honesty he has to give; "I love this place, too."

 


	6. only us

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> music:
> 
>   * chopin's _[sunshine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6Sg9qE2Dpk)_ \- eric lu (again from the most recent int. chopin competition)
> 


"Why do you _keep_ slowing it down?"

"Yurio, I’m—"

"Move."

When Yuuri doesn’t immediately slide off the piano bench, Yurio physically nudges him, elbowing at him until he’s near teetering off one edge of the seat.

"I said _move_ ," Yurio mutters, before he’s sitting beside Yuuri, flipping the _Salut D’Amour_ booklet back to the first page so aggressively that Yuuri braces himself for the sound of paper ripping.

It doesn’t come. Instead, there’s Yurio playing without preamble, fingers deft where his wrists are stiff from having to accommodate Yuuri hogging space in front of the piano. He’s restless, having had to play the part of Yuuri’s page-turner for the last two hours, and his displeased growls about Yuuri’s playing going ignored this whole time. The pile-up of boredom shows in the way he plays, eyes eager on the notes and fingers easily keeping up.

Yurio plays it well, on the technical sense, the piece nothing difficult for either of them. But hearing Yurio play makes _Salut D’Amour_ itch more at Yuuri—seeing someone else play it is like being forced to face this gaping _hole_ in the piece, a missing spot that Yuuri wants to fill, except he’s not really sure what exactly is missing.

It’s been two weeks since the festival—which means two weeks since Yurio had arrived, and two weeks of Yuuri slaving over _Salut D’Amour,_ getting his fingers accustomed to how _he_ wants it to sound, not the way the sheet wants it to sound. Even then, something about it feels out of place, out of balance, and, even within two weeks, Yuuri still hasn’t figured out what to do about it.

The first week, he’d camped out in his room to listen to the piece on the violin, the viola, the cello, forcing himself to match the airy and tinny version of it that string instruments produce. Yurio had eventually found him and threw the idea out the window, stomping away with Yuuri’s phone and muttering _disgrace_ under his breath.

Last week, Yuuri tried to embellish the piece more, experimenting with trills and staccato—but it had all felt unnecessary, excessive instead of just trying to fill out the piece so that it doesn’t feel lacking, so that it feels enough and full and _right_ instead.

This week, it seems, is dedicated to tempo, shoving aside all of the notations in the booklet in favor of trying the piece in its basic form in all the ways he can—slow, fast, happy, melancholy.

But that feels like borrowing, too, taking advantage of something rented. _Salut D’Amour_ is mild and warm and soft, and it’s a piece that Yuuri can’t fool his way around; playing it when it feels so wholly _not_ his own results in the kind of rendition that’s in danger of sounding insincere if Yuuri’s anxiety gets the best of him on the day of the actual performance.

Both Minako and Celestino have always made it a point not to allow Yuuri to play that type of music, taking into account potential consequences. He doesn’t have a choice this time, though; it’s too late to find another piece with the wedding a week and a half away, for one, but, more importantly, he’s not _quitting_ on this.

He’s not quitting on the one thing he can give Yuuko and Nishigori, the one thing he can possess so completely and give to them with a piece of his heart attached, genuine and all that they deserve after all this time.

His immune system’s keen on obstructing that goal, though.

Yurio stops playing abruptly as Yuuri drowns out the piano with a loud sneeze, cutting _Salut D’Amour_ off as Yurio groans, dragging himself as far from Yuuri as possible—except it’s to grab the tissue box sitting on one of the free chairs, half-tossing it towards Yuuri.

"Stop spreading your germs, goddamn," Yurio mutters, watching unimpressed as Yuuri blows his nose. He hasn't told Yuuri to go home, to stop practicing, which is something worth appreciating, if only because it connects the two of them in some shared acceptance that they’re both too guilty in always prioritizing music. "Jeez, you look like shit."

Yuuri doesn’t disagree with him; he _feels_ like it, too. "Sorry."

"Should you even _be_ here?" Yurio narrows his eyes. "Children use this room."

Yuuri wants to point out that his home is even more of a public space than this lone practice room is, but in his cotton haze, Yurio’s words sound almost like concern, so he doesn’t push it.

"No one uses this room." He feels a sneeze coming on and pauses, but it passes. It seems to worsen his existing nausea, though, and he’s not sure if it’s because of his on-off cold and fever symptoms, or because of something else altogether. "Minako-sensei doesn’t have—she doesn’t have as many students as she used to."

Yurio’s face does something complicated, a slight spasm around his mouth.Yuuri’s starting to recognize this as Yurio’s thoughtful expression; it never lasts long, probably more a product of rejecting contemplation than it is a manifestation of any actual deep existential thinking going on.

Yurio, Yuuri’s also starting to recognize, isn’t a hard person to get a handle of at all. In the past two weeks, he’s mellowed out—as much as someone like Yurio can mellow out—from prolonged interaction with Yuuko, a grudging friendship taking root as Yurio gets roped into the wedding preparations.

Beyond that, he’s still unpredictable, volatile, but no worse than Victor himself is unpredictable. They both fall into the same spectrum of being creatures of patterns and familiar responses, at least in their interactions with Yuuri, and their personalities have both become familiar songs to Yuuri’s ears, something he knows how to adjust his fingers and wrists and foot pedal usage around, if not something he knows by heart quite yet.

"Does Victor know about this?"

Yuuri sniffles, the sound clogged through his ears. It’s the absolute _worst_ , but he ignores how hot he feels, the telltale signs of a phantom cold and a stress fever that usually arrives a week before important competitions. It’s like clockwork, really, and he’s resigned himself to the reality of it.

"Know about what?" he says, only it comes out more like _No ‘bou-chwa?_

Yurio glares, but he doesn’t ask for clarification. "That this place is, I don’t know, _dying_."

"It’s not _dying_ ," Yuuri protests, grabbing two more tissues. His body is starting to complain in earnest at the warmth, and he fans himself with one tissue, which only proves itself useless. "And I—I don’t understand the question."

Yurio parks himself against one of the walls adjacent to Yuuri, one knee bent so he can rest his foot against the wall. It’s probably meant to fall somewhere between intimidation and feigned nonchalance, but Yuuri just stares, amused through another round of nose-blowing, and doesn’t fall for it.

"He has that _thing—_ or whatever." Yurio pronounces _thing_ with an aggressive dental _t,_ like he’s saying something much worse than the vague term that it actually is. "About this place."

"Thing? With this place?" Yuuri keeps staring, lost. His vision feels a little off, his head swimming, and he has to close his eyes for a bit, heat spiking behind them, before they can refocus back on Yurio. "With Hasetsu?"

"No, this practice room." Yurio rolls his eyes, but the gesture doesn’t quite meet the aggression of his glares. " _Yes_ , with Hasetsu. He has this—this—"

Yuuri waits it out, patient, as Yurio gets progressively irritated about having to even find the word. The restlessness translates into his hands, clenching and unclenching the way it did when he’d found the _Salut D’Amour_ sheets that first time, and it makes Yuuri feel better, somehow, that he’s not the only pianist out there with such obvious trouble with words, first or second language be damned.

" _Obssession_ ," Yurio finally decides, looking for the most part like he physically had to drag himself out of quicksand just to find the word. "He has this _obsession_ with Hasetsu. He makes it sound like it’s fucking _El Dorado_."

"Hasetsu’s hardly quest worthy." Yuuri huffs a laugh, but even that is laced with his confusion. His head feels as cottony as his nose now, and he’s sure only about 30% of what Yurio is saying is actually getting through to the next level of cognitive understanding. "It’s just an old town?"

"That’s what _I_ told him," Yurio hisses, tone alarming if not for the genuine agreement in his words. "But he just started packing, acting like you personally invited him here—"

"Wait," Yuuri says, holding up a hand. His voice sounds so _nasal_ , and he winces, lowering his hand. "You lost me."

Yurio’s face does that complicated twitch again, his mouth joining more enthusiastically this time, but before he can form a single sound, much less a word, there’s a knock on the door, a quick staccato of a knuckle rap before the hinges are creaking open.

From the way Yurio’s expression sours completely, Yuuri knows it’s _not_ Yuuko before he even turns.

"Hi, hi, _hi._ " Victor blinks down at them, perfect smile freezing on his face for all of five seconds before it smoothens into something unruffled. "I come with good news about what we’re having for din—"

He breaks off, and Yuuri almost feels bad for the way Victor’s face scrunches back up again as his eyes finally fall from Yurio to Yuuri.

"Yuuri," Victor says, slow. "Are you okay?"

The _I’m fine_ is built against the roof of Yuuri’s mouth, trained and unthinking, but the words die as Victor places a hand on his forehead, palm cool.

Against his better judgment, Yuuri sighs, leaning into Victor’s familiar touch as the hand slides down to his cheek, cupping it in concern.

His next words are directed at Yurio, though. "How long has he been like this?"

Yurio’s staring down at the floor, dragging the tip of his sneaker against it, petulant. "Like, an hour after we got here."

Victor’s voice, crisp: "When was that?"

"I don’t fucking know?" Yurio, irritated. "Some time after we had lunch?"

"And?" Victor sounds mild as ever, watching Yuuri’s face with the usual curiosity. Yuuri has to wonder if there’s just a part in Victor’s head that’s perpetually thinking of how to describe things, from fried tempura to the exact shade of red Yuuri’s face turns when he’s this close to Victor. "You decided to come with him here despite him looking like he’s about to pass out any second?"

"I’m _not_ —" Yuuri protests—a weak attempt, when caught between Victor and Yurio.

"Okay, well," Yurio says, tone sharpening, a reliable sign that his defences are going up. "Do you _think_ he’ll go home? Don’t look at me like it’s my _fault—_ he’s _twenty-three_."

"Twenty four in a few days," Yuuri corrects, but it comes out frail.

"That makes this even worse," Yurio mutters.

"Right, okay, Yuuri, that’s enough for today." Victor’s standing up, taking his hand off Yuuri’s face and leaving Yuuri’s face feeling hot, overheated, his head a lot lighter than it was five minutes ago.

It’s hard to tell, though, how much of that is him reacting to Victor, and how much is his fever coming more clearly to light now that someone’s pointing it out.

His vision’s swimming more steadily at this point, no longer something that can be ignored by closing his eyes for a bit, and he blinks down at the floor as Victor brushes around him, plucking the sheets off the stand before placing his hand back on Yuuri—on his arm this time, touch unmistakeable even through the fabric of Yuuri’s hoodie.

"Let’s stand up, Yuuri, okay?" Victor’s voice is so soft, gentle, and Yuuri’s coaxed into standing—only for his eyesight to blur. It’s a familiar feeling, the way it feels when he gets a new prescription for his glasses and orienting himself takes more effort than it did before, and that's almost a consolation when he’s surprised into sitting back down again, breath hitching.

Feeble but automatic, Yuuri says; "I’m fine."

Not even a beat passes before he’s rewarded with only a snort from Yurio, near derisive, and a sigh from Victor.

Yuuri thinks Victor says something when he tries to stand up again, but whatever it is lost as his knees wobble, legs crumpling. He feels _so_ lightheaded, the nausea from earlier coming back now with a vengeance, like some sort of heat stroke on steroids.

He _means_ to say something, he really does, but he doesn’t even get to open his mouth before his vision swims one more time.

And then he blacks out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yuuri wakes up _parched_.

Thin strips of light are slipping in through the curtains, but his eyes still take a while to adjust to the darkness of his room. There’s shuffling somewhere behind his head before he even manages to make out the silhouette of his desk, and when he looks up, his sister’s sliding the door closed behind her.

She stops in her tracks for a second. "Oh—did I wake you up?"

"I—" Yuuri says—tries to say, cutting himself short when it comes out a croak.

Mari doesn’t even blink, producing a bottle of water and handing it to him without a word. She makes herself comfortable on the foot of the bed while Yuuri chugs down the water, near finishing the thing before he pops it away from his mouth.

"Better?" Mari asks. "Or should I get you a new bottle?"

"No, I’m okay—Better." Yuuri wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, embarrassed. He feels light-headed, still, the nausea completely at home now, but his throat no longer feels dry and rough like sandpaper, the cold magically gone. "How did you—how did—"

"How did I know you’ll wake up around this time and need water? Gut feeling. It’s not like this is the first time you’ve gotten sick." Mari gestures for him to hand the bottle over. "You missed _katsudon_ for dinner, by the way. We sent your celebrity crush over to tell you and everything but then he came back with you—"

"Stop, stop, stop—" Yuuri holds up both hands as soon as Mari takes the bottle from him. He flushes as the memories come back; what little of it there is, at least, from flitting in and out of consciousness on the way back to the inn, the warmth of Victor’s back, Yurio’s voice on edge somewhere in the back of it all. "Oh _god_."

"Oh god," Mari agrees, but it’s as toneless as Yuuri’s is mortified. She kicks at the covers so Yuuri can slip back into them, her eyes never leaving him, pensive and sharp. It’s not until Yuuri’s fully settled back under the duvet, shivering slightly, that she adds; "Does this happen often?"

It’s a question that makes up for its brevity with sentiment, characteristic of her, and Yuuri doesn’t have to ask what she means. "Not often," he mumbles. "Sometimes my body just reacts when things get stressful, and then—then fevers happen."

"I know that," Mari says. Her voice is quiet, still, but it’s not deadpan. "I mean—do you still usually practice? Even though you’re sick? Like today?"

Yuuri stares up at the ceiling, weighing words that aren’t really there, because this is the first time he’s been confronted with the question from someone who wouldn’t understand why he’s being so stubborn, as well as someone he really, really doesn’t want to lie to.

The thing with piano is that it’s been his life and goal and coping mechanism for so long that everything outside of it and his perception of it tends to blur in comparison. Piano gives him purpose, because it’s something he can always throw himself into, even if his relationship with it in the past couple of years has been rocky. Everything else is temporary, excusable, because unlike most other things in his life, piano has accumulated within in a certain amount of _worth_ , of visible justification that Yuuri can go back to and say _ah, at least I did_ this _well._

That’s no excuse, though, for not taking care of himself despite knowing when and how, despite having people like Phichit and Celestino harping at him to do so. It isn’t that he wants to martyr himself, just that he’s too stubborn about having limits when he knows he’s dealing with the kind he _can_ push, the kind of limits that will yield to his efforts, if he just tried enough, instead of the kind that will drag him down the way stage anxiety can.

Yuuri’s great at compromises, but it doesn’t mix well, he thinks, when he knows he can be so greedy at heart.

Even more so for things he’s already had a taste of.

He knows what it’s like to be able to play through a cold, a fever. He knows he can do it. There’s no excuse then, for allowing himself a break with things like these as an excuse.

The sentiment must be written all over his face, because Mari sighs. "What did you do these past five years?"

That, at least, is a straightforward question. "Playing piano," he says. "And missing this place, mostly."

Mari doesn’t sigh again, miraculously, opting to shove Yuuri’s legs over to make space for her under the covers, muttering under her breath about how _you used to be so cute, how did you become this stubborn_.

"Mom’s really worried, you know," she adds, once she’s settled in. They used to do this, as children, lie down in each other’s beds whispering about high school disappointments and middle school woes and idols and piano and Victor’s books and what it would be like, maybe, if or when Mari eventually takes over the inn.

Their age gap had always made Mari’s world feel so distant to Yuuri, back when he was so much younger, with no idea of the kind of things Mari did when she was away at school, even though she, at least, had an idea of what middle school was like for him. It had felt unfair to Yuuri, that Mari gets to experience things so much ahead of him, that she can always say things like _it won’t be so bad_ with a certainty that he can’t wrap his head around—and the imbalance remains ever so clear now, only this time it’s Yuuri that feels like he’s being unfair to his sister, for having been so far away, for thinking of things that he’ll never be able to articulate to her the way he used to with other things.

Yuuri’s bed is far too small to fit them now, but they make it work. "She doesn’t have to be worried."

"I think she won’t let you go back to New York," Mari says, serious enough. "Now that she knows you can’t even be bothered to take a sick day."

Yuuri doesn’t say anything, and Mari props her head on one hand, leaning down at him. "Would you?" she continues, so easily reading Yuuri’s thoughts. "If she told you to stay here and not go back to New York, would you?"

Yuuri keeps staring up at his ceiling, willing himself not to process the question. Not going back to New York means not going back to the apartment he shares with Phichit, to his favorite practice room _there_ , to the flights and practices and interviews and attention that comprises his life outside of Hasetsu.

He’s always known that to take Hasetsu out of his life is to lack something. To constantly miss something, feeling its absence so strongly.

Taking New York out, though, doesn’t feel much different either—it’s not a crippling heaviness the way missing Hasetsu is like, but it’s an ache in itself, now that he thinks about it. Now that he thinks about the sound of Phichit’s voice when he sings in the shower, the space in the fire escape outside their living room window, the bookshelf between their bedroom doors for binders holding their sheet music together.

Looking around his bedroom right now, eyes finally adjusted, his bedroom in New York feels exactly how this room used to feel when he’d first moved. It’s all the same in the end, leaving a place.

Yuuri hadn’t thought it would be hard to choose, when it came down to it.

"Mom would never say that," he finally says.

"No, she won’t," Mari agrees, like she’d been waiting for him to point this out. "But you won’t get to go to New York now and do your disappearing act for another five years. You know that, right?"

It feels ridiculous, all of a sudden, that he’d forced himself for five whole years to maintain some semblance of independence—ridiculous when, all this time, he’s been equally reliant on his memories of Hasetsu and the thought of coming back. It’s much easier thinking of himself as self-sufficient—a burden to no one, responsible for nothing but himself—when he cuts himself off from people, from the world, but it’s not easy at all, when the world’s so keen to remind him that it’s there anyway, no matter how much effort he puts into self-isolation.

If he stays in Hasetsu, Phichit would keep sending him photos and leaving calls in his e-mails.

If he goes back to New York—

"I won’t," Yuuri says. The croak in his voice, this time, doesn’t seem like it’s from a dry throat at all. "I won’t disappear on you again."

It sounds feeble, none of the strength of a measure played in _forte_ , but Mari accepts it with a nod, accepts it with the easiness she accepts most things from customer complaints to the fact that Yuuri, at eighteen, had decided to go abroad, leaving her alone to help their parents. She never questions it, as soon as he’s said something, and like all the times that came before, Yuuri feels overwhelmed with gratitude.

"You don’t—" Yuuri swallows. "You don’t have to stay with me."

It’s hard to tell in the dim light, but he thinks Mari just rolls her eyes, flopping back to lie more comfortably beside him. "Go back to sleep, Yuuri. I’ll be right here."

It’s the same tone as her murmured _take care of yourself_ at the airport, five years before, only her expression isn’t so strained this time, isn’t pained like it was when they’d spoken in the locker room, like she’s said all that she needed to say, and that was it.

So Yuuri accepts that, too, himself, and drifts back to sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

The dreams have stopped for the most part in the past two weeks, so Yuuri is admittedly more bothered than he should be when he dreams again that night, far too vivid.

He’s walking along the beach this time, Makkachin following after him, when he spots Victor sitting by the water, back to Yuuri. But before he can step forward, much less call out, the sand’s giving in from under him, and he watches, panicked, as Makkachin darts forward without him, running off to Victor, who doesn’t even look behind him, uncaring of the fact that Yuuri is sinking, bit by bit, into sand.

"Makkachin," someone says. "Ah—gosh—Makkachin—"

Yuuri jerks abruptly awake at the first wet lick against his face, and by the third, he’s blinking fast, trying to get his eyes to adjust to the cluster of figures around him, too much to take in all at once alongside all the sunlight flooding the room.

He makes out Makkachin first, a heavy weight leaning over Yuuri, licking as much of his face as he can—and then Yuuko, trying in vain to get the dog to calm down.

Yuuri only notices Yurio, huddled against the corner next to Yuuri’s closet, when he speaks, disgruntled; "At least he’s awake now."

"But he might need more rest." Yuuko bites her lip, sighing as Makkachin finally gets off Yuuri with a few scratches behind one ear. "How are you feeling, Yuuri-kun?"

_Not that great_ , really; he’d thought the worst of the fever has subsided when he’d woken up to his sister earlier, but though the nausea has gone, he feels weakened, like his body has somehow found a way to make itself swollen as a whole, sapping all the strength out of him.

They’re all symptoms he’s used to, but it’s yet to get easier every time he has a fever.

He’s spared from answering by Yurio ambling over to peer at him, unimpressed. "He still looks like _shit_ , honestly."

"Language, Yurio-kun," Yuuko admonishes, and Yuuri’s surprised to see Yurio have the grace to at least look away. To Yuuri, she asks; "Do you need to go to the doctor? Takeshi can drive you—"

"I’m fine," Yuuri says. He gets twin looks of disbelief at that, again, and he clears his throat. "I mean—I don’t have to go to the doctor—it will blow off in a couple of a days."

"A _couple_ of days?" Yuuko still looks skeptical, but she doesn’t waste any more time arguing, walking over to Yuuri’s desk. There’s a tray on top of it, holding a few bowls of different sizes and a glass of water. "Can you eat?"

"He better," Yurio mutters, sitting down on Yuuri’s bed without invitation. He battles for space with Makkachin for a little bit, not bothering to be subtle in avoiding Yuuri’s eyes. "You spent so much time making food."

" _We_ did," Yuuko corrects, mild, as she brings a bowl over. "It’s just broth and rice porridge, but eat slowly, okay?"

Yuuri blinks at her, then at Yurio, before nodding. "Yeah—I—Thank you—" he says, tripping over the words as Yuuko raises the spoon. He realizes what she means to do too late. "Oh—oh no, I can feed myself—"

Yuuko laughs, but she hands the spoon over. She sits down on Yuuri’s desk chair, content to find him something to use as a makeshift table as he blows on the broth. "I hope it’s not too salty? Yurio-kun—"

"It tastes _good_ ," Yurio cuts in, still not making eye contact. "It’s not salty. Shut up."

Yuuko keeps laughing, taking some sort of savage pleasure in flustering Yurio—one that Yuuri can’t help but join in, blinking as he swallows down a spoonful. It’s _not_ salty, but there isn’t much flavor either; Yuuri can’t seem to tell what kind of broth it even is, just that it tastes like vaguely flavored water. But it’s not too hard chalking it up to his sickness, and he offers Yurio a grateful smile, if a little strained.

"Thank you."

"I didn’t make it," Yurio says, automatic.

"Thank you," Yuuri repeats, smile widening. "For helping Yuuko."

That seems to corner Yurio into silence, dissolving into incoherent grumbles as Yuuri eats, trying to hide his smile behind his spoon. Yuuko’s not faring any better at hiding her own smile, and it’s this—this tenderness that always seems to surround Yuuko in all that she does, in interactions with both a childhood friend like Yuuri and a newcomer like Yurio—that has Yuuri blurting out;

"I’m sorry."

Yuuko blinks at him. "Oh, you don’t have to finish it if you can’t, I just wanted to make sure you’d eat something and I know the inn’s busy around lunch—"

"No, I mean—" Yuuri shoves another spoonful into his mouth, stalling. Yurio’s detached himself completely from the conversation, and it leaves behind a patient Yuuko. "I—I’m sorry. In advance. For the—I’ve been practicing a lot, but _Salut D’Amour_ is—"

"Oh," Yuuko says, realization dawning. "No—no, why would you apologize?"

"I can’t—" Yuuri feels silly, overdramatic over one piece. Yuuko’s gaze tended to do that to him when they were children, but even more so now that she’s had years to comprehend his stubborn perfectionism relative to her own approach to piano. "I can’t get it _right."_

Yurio snorts, but Yuuko ignores him, tilting her head. "What do you mean?"

Yuuri stares. "What?"

"What do you mean you can’t get it right?"

"I—" Yuuri stares down at his broth. The odd thing about interacting with Yuuko is that she always forces words out of Yuuri, even when she doesn't have to, even though she’d understand anyway. "It just doesn’t _feel_ right. It doesn’t—it doesn’t feel enough? It just doesn’t feel like it _fits_."

He pauses, looking down at his free hand, miming the first two measures, slow. "I just don’t think I understand it," he says, finally. "And I don’t—I don’t think I’m the right person for—I don’t think it should be _me_ playing at a wedding."

Yuuko frowns, and it’s such an innocent expression on her, so genuine, that Yuuri feels even sillier, bothered over something he can’t even explain. He rushes to continue anyway, pretending not to notice Yurio’s stare. "It’s just—love should feel like this huge thing, right? It’s—it should—" _Should feel like the nocturne_ , consuming, leaving no space for other thoughts, other emotions. "It should be _big_. I mean—they don’t have dramatic reunion scenes in movies for nothing, right? Or wedding videos?"

He’s rambling now, for sure, but he can’t stop. "But _Salut D’Amour_ is so soft? It’s so—it’s so _vulnerable_. It feels weak, and I—I don’t think that’s the kind of thing I want to be showing when I’m celebrating your _wedding_ night."

Yuuko’s frown doesn’t leave. "Softness isn’t weakness, Yuuri-kun."

"I know that," Yuuri says. He does. He really does, more than anything, more than anyone. "I _know_ that. But it’s just—I’m celebrating something huge here. You’re—" He waves a spoon around. "You and Nishigori are getting _married_."

His eyes catch on Yurio’s, and for a second, they share a look, Yuuri helpless and Yurio—not irritated, nowhere close to angry, but exasperated, almost.

"Okay," Yuuko says, careful, pulling Yuuri’s attention back to her. "Okay. I think I get what you’re having a problem with, I—I think you’re just—trying too hard to understand it."

She smiles, a little shy, when both Yurio and Yuuri stare at her, but she continues. "You—it’s not something general, Yuuri-kun. I mean, yeah, for some people it’s a big thing, it changes their lives and all that, but for other people, it’s not really—" She breaks off, twiddling her thumbs. "How do I say this—Nothing changed, you know, when I realized—when I realized I would say yes, if Takeshi asked me to marry him. It’s just something that’s always been there, and it didn’t change my life in some monumental way. Just like being in a relationship with him didn’t magically fix the fact that I didn’t know what to do after high school, or that I don’t really know how the future will turn out at all. But it made it better, because I could be with someone who understood how I felt. I didn’t feel weak or vulnerable, just—just _understood_."

Yuuko seems to have even Makkachin’s attention now, and she laughs, embarrassed. "And I think that’s what love should feel like, in the end. Not really that everything makes sense, or that you understand life or anything like that in particular—just that it’s _okay_ , for things to not make sense. Because you have someone who understands you.

"Love isn’t—it’s not something that takes over everything else. I mean, at first it _is_ —but, love slows down, you know?" She makes a face, wincing as she holds up both hands. "Instead of kicking everything else out from your life that nothing else is left but the person you love, it sort of—I don’t know how to explain this—it sort of makes everything come together?" She brings her palms against each other at this, a light clap. "It’s not, like, a solution. Or something you get lost in and never get out of. It’s more like, love is something that you go through, that you experience, and it makes you a better version of yourself because you know there’s always going to be someone there who understands, who will support you."

She nudges one bowl closer to Yuuri, blushing down at the floor. It’s a silent plea for him to keep eating and pretend she’s not pouring out sentiment after sentiment, and Yuuri understands the feeling enough to easily comply. "And I think—I think _Salut D’Amour_ gets that feeling, too. Not something that keeps your attention because it’s grand or excessive. Just something that keeps your attention because it’s—because it’s love. It’s quiet and gentle, but it’s just something that _is_ , not slow or fast, just something you feel.

"So," Yuuko says, voice cracking after saying so much so fast. "If you stop trying to understand it and just, you know, go with the flow, maybe, it will fill in the missing piece for you." She smiles, pretty and sincere and everything that Yuu-chan has always been. "At least, that’s what I think. But really, we’re not asking you to do something fancy or concours-worthy. We trust that whatever you do, however you choose to play it, will be beautiful. It always is."

Trust her to sneak in something like that even after ten minutes’ worth of advice, and Yuuri’s taken aback, barely finding the proper sounds for a _thank you_ as Yuuko stands up, dusting off non-existent dust from her sweater.

"Okay, boys, I think I’ve embarrassed myself enough," she says, cheeks pink. "I need to head back to the library, but—Yuuri-kun, I hope you feel better soon. And—don't—don't worry so much." She hesitates, hand twitching, but her hand eventually makes it to the top of Yuuri’s head, patting before she does it to Yurio, too, met by surprisingly minimal protests. "And thanks for helping out, Yurio-kun."

"I didn’t do anything," Yurio says, but Yuuko’s already shrugging on her jacket.

"Thank you," Yuuri manages, the syllables heavy. "I—"

"Don’t apologize so much, either," Yuuko says. "Thanking will do. You know we’re always happy to help."

It says a lot about her, and Yuuri’s family, that she slips into _we_ so smoothly, and Yuuri watches her go like that, sliding the door closed behind her with one last smile.

And then it’s dead silent in the room.

When Yuuri turns back, though, Yurio’s staring at him, eyes not quite narrowed, but sharp as ever.

"What is it?"

Yurio wastes no time. "Why’d you go and apologize?"

Yuuri blinks.

"Why would you apologize for a performance before you even do it?" Yurio sounds stumped, the gruffness of his voice not quite enough to mask his confusion. "You keep doing that. You tell your sister that you are sorry for not coming back. You tell your old piano teacher that you are sorry for losing this and that."

"I—" Yuuri frowns, hand quivering around his soup spoon. Makkachin nudges him, sensing his discomfort, and he sighs. "I _am_ sorry, though."

"Yeah, but saying sorry—what would that do?" Yurio fiddles with one end of Yuuri’s duvet, annoyed with the fact that Yuuri doesn’t seem to get his question. "If you have something to say, just perform again. Do better next time. What would words do when you have nothing to show for it?"

It’s such a clear issue for someone like Yurio, but it makes sense, and Yuuri doesn’t quite know how to respond.

He doesn’t have to, because Yurio, like Yuuko had earlier, seems to have found a train of thought he wants to pursue, if less comfortable using his words than Yuuko had been. " _You_ know when you did shit, don’t you? When you finish that performance, you _know_ it is not what you wanted it to be. Why waste time apologizing when it is easier to go on and do it better?"

It’s such a mature thing, to be aware of shortcomings and so eager to do something about them. It’s strange, because Yurio tends to act with the fifteen-year-old mindset that he knows how things _should_ be, that there’s a specific order to things that he’s privy to, and it’s startling to hear him articulate this awareness now.

It also strikes Yuuri as surprisingly idealistic of Yurio, to apply his perfectionism to the idea of unlimited second chances. But Yurio doesn’t have the same demons that Yuuri’s had to fight, and there’s an honest lack of understanding in Yurio’s face, about why Yuuri would even fumble, about why Yuuri would feel defeated about something that shouldn’t matter when there’s always the promise of _more_ somewhere else.

The thing is that Yuuri doesn’t know why he thinks that way, either, so he tells Yurio as much. "I apologize for doing badly because I know I could have done better," he adds, playing with spoonfuls of broth. "But—as for apologizing to my sister about not coming back, it’s—it’s really just that they do so much. For me. And I don’t think I’ve done much for them in return."

This is old news. This is something easy to articulate, because he’s had to explain it to himself and Phichit so much over the past five years. He leaves it at that, safe in the knowledge that even a sentiment like this is accessible to Yurio, but he’s met with silence.

And then: "That’s stupid."

Yuuri blinks at him.

"You make it so complicated," Yurio mutters. "It is not. They do shit for you, you wanna do shit for them. But sometimes they don't even wanna let you do shit for them. Sometimes other shit is enough."

Yuuri blinks again; he has to wonder if it's his feverish haze, or if Yurio just said _shit_ one too many times. "You lost me."

Yurio groans. "My grandpa can’t come to every show, can he? But then he shows up sometimes and brings me _pirozhki_ or whatever. Is this not what it's about? You make up for the other thing."

"I—" Yuuri swallows. "I really don’t think that’s the same thing, Yurio."

A family member missing one performance isn’t the same thing as a family member not coming back for five years, no matter which way you cut it. Yuuri has established that his family doesn’t begrudge him for it, maybe, but that leaves in its wake an instinctive guilt over the idea of leaving again, of leaving again to return to something he didn’t even leave with glory and fanfare.

"It is," Yurio insists. "You just think too much. It is—give and take. Just that. Not a barter system. If you did not give them something, then keep trying instead of—" He waves a hand. "This—this running away. It does not work. Not for you. Or Vi—"

He cuts himself off, abrupt, but Yuuri’s already staring at him. "Or?"

Yurio stares down at the sheets, and doesn’t answer.

Yuuri hadn’t wanted to pry, since the first time Yurio had done this, but he’s apparently hit his limit now, putting down his spoon to peer at Yurio’s face, curious. "Earlier," he says, "when you said Victor has an obsession with this place, and that he came here like—like I personally invited him. What did you mean?"

He’s surprised at how clear his voice comes out, for all that his heart feels so wary about having to confront the situation. 

Yurio fixes his gaze on a distant spot behind Yuuri’s head before saying, stiff; "Don’t play dumb."

"I really have no idea what you mean, Yurio," Yuuri says, forcing his voice to soften.

Yurio can’t seem to back out when approached this directly, even as he straightens, jaw locking. "He was at Warsaw," he says. "He has this _thing_ about coming to see me when my grandpa can’t, so he was there for the second stage."

Yuuri had done well enough, that stage; the _Étude Op. 10, No. 8_ is demanding in terms of technique, but it hadn’t been demanding, nor even anywhere close to draining, in terms of emotion. Chopin’s _Sunshine_ is fast, leaving no room to breathe as it builds a whole world around him, and it hadn’t been difficult to imagine Hasetsu, to remember his childhood memories with only fondness and none of the homesickness that is usually present alongside it.

That was probably his mistake, sorting the fondness and the homesickness into two even categories, so that by the time he got to the last stage, playing the nocturne, homesickness was all that’s left, ready to be fed to the grief of the piece.

"I don’t know the details so don’t nag me." Yurio’s watching Yuuri’s expression closely as he continues. "But he said something like—something about being dead when you have no inspiration. And then he fucking left."

"He—" Yuuri thinks Yurio missed a key step in his story. "He left?"

"He hung around for some interview you gave the Chopin Institute," Yurio says. "Whatever you said in that interview, it had him packing up in two days and leaving me in Poland."

"And coming here," Yuuri says, but his voice feels disembodied. "To Hasetsu?"

"Yeah," Yurio mutters. "You convinced him there’s something about this place or whatever. It just sounds like an excuse to me."

It _is_ an excuse. Yuuri knows Victor well enough by now to know this must have been Victor grasping at the nearest set of straws—but it still feels like being doused in cold water, the realization that Victor hadn’t gone to Hasetsu blind. He’d come without an idea of why he was here, just that he wanted to be—and Yuuri can’t begrudge him that, when he’s on the exact same boat. 

_I’m a very simple person, you see. Curiosity killed the cat, they say. I don’t listen very often._

"But—but why Hasetsu?" Yuuri says, stammering around for the right questions. "What did I do?"

"I said don’t _nag_ me." There’s vague annoyance in Yurio’s voice, but the breathless exasperation is stronger still. "I don’t _know_. I followed him here once I settled some things after the competition." Under his breath, he adds; "Now I doubt he came for the place at all."

Yuuri almost chokes on the broth, but then Yurio’s getting up, shuffling the covers around noisily so he doesn’t have to acknowledge Yuuri’s protests above the rustling of fabric and Makkachin’s whines. 

"I am finished with you," Yurio declares, eyeing what’s left of Yuuri’s food. 

There’s still a lot, but Yuuri doesn’t find the appetite in him to even finish the rest of his broth. 

Yurio seems to get that. "If you are done eating, I’m supposed to make sure you don’t die when you shower. Or do a towel bath. Whatever." After a beat, he adds; "The hot springs is also off-limits until the fever is completely gone."

It sounds so droll, so stiff, that Yuuri has to smile anyway, because for all that Yurio pretends to not care in any way, it’s almost dutiful, the way he relays this information. 

So Yuuri swallows down two more spoonfuls before pushing the tray away, and follows, wobbly on his feet, after Yurio. 

 

 

 

 

Minako comes over at some point and forces herbal medicine down Yuuri’s throat while his mother watches on. 

From there, they take turns lecturing Yuuri, and he has to sit through a perfect duet of _just because you_ can _doesn’t mean you have to_ ’s for what feels like two hours straight, eating his ginger porridge while Yurio stares from the doorway of the bedroom, snickering along to a scolding he can’t even understand.

It’s past the entire inn’s bedtime by the time Minako leaves, but Yuuri isn’t even surprised when Victor sulks into his room, hair damp and expression as close to surly as Yuuri’s ever seen it.

He hasn’t seen Victor since yesterday, and the realization settles with an odd twinge. Victor has been busy for the past couple of weeks, missing mealtimes and forgoing his regular bath times to either take up a silent corner of the main area or head off to the library to work while Yuuri’s off practicing. At some point, someone will drag him off to remind him to eat, often under the pretense of picking Yuuri and Yurio up from Minako’s, and that had replaced their old routine, accommodating the lives and work habits they’d meant to leave behind in coming to Hasetsu. 

Even then, though, Victor had been a solid part of Yuuri’s everyday experience; it’s near impossible to not interact with someone you share such a huge space with, from the hallway to the entire inn to the city itself. There’s no escaping Victor, especially not when he somehow manages to dominate the forefront of Yuuri’s conscious, a question that had at first been content to remain an enigma but in the last few days has begun to demand an answer.

Victor’s gone from an object of fascination to a tension that curls around Yuuri whenever they’re alone with each other, especially heavy now that neither of them hesitate in their touches, nor feel compelled to stop talking to each other as soon as they start a conversation. 

Yuuri feels like he’s unlocked something, the night on the beach, a constant flow of conversation that he can’t pull himself out of, because it’s as captivating to be on the other end of Victor’s attention as it is to be staring at Victor himself. 

He _gets_ it, gets the magnetic pull that he’d always objectively dismissed as charisma. 

Victor _listens_ —he listens with such rapt attention that Yuuri feels like the focal point of Victor’s entire world in that moment, and everything dwindles down to the honesty he’s pushing out with each syllable. Victor’s so easy to trust, and that’s such a terrifying thing, to be so ready to open up about everything from his favorite books to his greatest fears as a musician when it took him months to even be comfortable inserting himself into practice groups back in Juilliard. 

Talking—words—has and never will be Yuuri’s strong suit, but that doesn’t seem to matter to Victor, and so they exist in this state of equilibrium, like their relationship has settled weeks after their first meeting. 

It’s terrifying, even, that Victor’s in a position to drag Yuuri’s desk chair over by the bed so he can peer at Yuuri in concern, and that Yuuri just lets it happen—lets it happen because he realizes all of a sudden that it had felt weird, to have gone twenty-four hours without seeing Victor, if only to exchange a small private smile, if only to be reassured that he’s still here, in Yuuri’s space, tangible and real. 

"Every time I came to check in on you, you were _asleep_. Only when _I_ was checking in." There’s a definite pout in his voice, but it clears away as a smile takes over. "How are you feeling?"

Yuuri blinks, sitting up in his bed and catching himself before he can keep staring. "Better—" He stops short, words dying in his throat when Victor reaches up to brush Yuuri’s hair away from his face. He has to try again, forcing himself to go along with the nonchalance on Victor’s face. "Fine. Much better. Mostly okay now. I—"

Victor hums, but he doesn’t take his hand away from Yuuri’s face, and he goes like that for a few more beats, thumb brushing just the slightest bit against Yuuri’s cheek as he stares, studying Yuuri’s face so thoroughly it should be uncomfortable.

"Um," Yuuri says. "Victor—"

"Yurio told me," Victor says at the same time. "That he tattled about my runaway story."

Yuuri’s almost glad, that Victor brings it up first, but the change in topic has Victor taking his hand away from Yuuri’s face, and Yuuri finds himself missing the touch, automatic, instinctive. It takes him embarrassingly long to say, somehow managing to go for half-joking; "To be fair, I never believed you showed up here without reason. No one disappears like that and shows up in a place like Hasetsu."

"Unless they’re running away from something," Victor points out, always so quick to remember Yuuri’s specific words even when he forgets tons of other things. "And I was."

"You—" Yuuri starts, before frowning. "Was?"

Victor smiles, genuine if not wide, and nods. "I finished writing today," he says, too casual. He pauses, contemplative, and it’s here that Yuuri belatedly notices Victor’s hand playing with his, two fingers curling, feather-light around Yuuri’s, absent-minded. "I wanted to tell you first."

Yuuri wrestles with surprise, but it has to end up showing on his face anyway. "Me?"

Victor nods, smile steady. "If it weren’t for you, I’d probably be in St. Petersburg retracing my early life in an attempt to make my world sound a lot less boring it actually is."

"Your life—" Yuuri shakes his head. "Your life isn’t _boring_."

Something flickers across Victor’s face, unreadable, but all it leaves behind is obvious disagreement with Yuuri’s words. 

So Yuuri feels the need to explain, back straightening; "But—but you travel so much. You meet all these people, go to all these places. You fit no matter where you go. You’re ready to try anything new. And—and you—" It must be contagious, whatever bug had Yuuko and Yurio both so keen to explain themselves earlier, passed on to Yuuri now. "You laugh at my dad’s bad jokes. You follow my mom’s recipes so well. You’re patient about learning from my sister and Minako-sensei and—and you make the place come alive and that—"

"Yuuri," Victor interrupts, gentle. "I don’t think any of that has anything to do with my _life_ as a whole."

"It does, though," Yuuri says. 

It does, because Yuuri understands more than anything that when everything else in your life caves in on you, all that’s left are the things that make you _you_ , and all of that, all of this—it’s the Victor that Yuuri knows now, knows through the small things he does that make it so much more noticeable when he’s gone, the Victor he knows not through his accomplishments in early adulthood but through the fact that he squeaks when he burns his hand on tempura oil and hums unnecessary lullabies to lull Makkachin to sleep. 

Victor used to embody this goal, this idea urging Yuuri that he can do better in his own field, but now Victor’s just the personification of comfort—comfort that even someone like him is human, that even someone like him feels lost, enough to grasp at the nearest thing. 

Yuuri has always had Victor to look up to; someone so comfortable in their own craft. But Victor’s fighting his own fight, running away from his own thing.

Yuuri doesn’t let himself think about it, just slides his fingers up Victor’s hand so that they’re palm to palm. "What did I do?" he finds himself asking. "What did I say, that made you want to come to Hasetsu?"

He doesn’t remember—doesn’t remember what interview Yurio means, what he must have said for Victor to just pick up his bags and _go_ , when all this time _he_ was the reason Yuuri packed it all up and went to New York. 

Victor’s been expecting the question; he doesn’t even blink. "They asked you what you would do, if you won the competition," he says. "And you said, without even hesitating, that you would come home, to the place you thought of when you played that etude. Just like that. So simple."

There’s another pause, and Yuuri allows it without interference. "All the time," Victor starts back up, soft. "I fall in love with things and people all the time, is what I think. When I travel, when I meet new people, when I start a new story. But when I heard you say that, I thought—how nice would it be, to be so attached to a place that returning to it would be worth more than being placed first on an international scale."

It's rare for Victor’s words to sound rough, unrehearsed—but these ones do. 

"So," Yuuri says, careful. "You came here?"

"I did, to figure out what all that fuss was about, dedicating a famous piano piece to a sleepy Japanese town," Victor says, tugging up one corner of his mouth back into a smile. "And I got a book out of it."

It sounds so meek, and for the first time, Yuuri notices the tired creases around Victor’s eyes, the product of long nights clearly spent on too much writing and too little sleep. But Victor looks _fulfilled_ , a far cry from how he’d looked on Yuuri’s first day here, and that feels like something that’s come full-circle. 

"It wasn’t so bad, as far as impulsive decisions go," Victor says, sliding his fingers through Yuuri’s now, eyes stuck to their entwined fingers the way it was when he’d been staring down at Yuuri earlier. "A beautiful boy plays a beautiful piece and leads me to a beautiful place. It’s a fairytale, isn’t it?" 

Yuuri’s almost thankful for Victor’s tight grasp on his hand, because he’s sure it’s shaking. "Beautiful?"

Victor blinks, all fake innocence. "Have I never told you that before?"

"You have," Yuuri says, heart in his throat. "You have, actually."

Victor blinks again.

"I attended one of your autograph sessions in Barnes & Noble once," Yuuri says. "And the message you left on my book—" He winces. "But you don’t remember that."

"Oh." He’d expected to get anything within the range of an amused laugh to an embarrassingly genuine _I’m sorry_ , but instead Victor just peers even closer at Yuuri, voice quiet when he says; "If you ask for another autograph, I’ll write it again. And this time, there’s no way I won’t remember you."

It’s automatic, to be flustered by this, and Yuuri jerks at their joined hands until he manages to elbow Victor, who _does_ erupt into low laughter this time, taking delight in making a fevered man blush. 

"Leave," Yuuri mutters, even as his heart beats _no, no, you’re the beautiful one,_ and _this isn’t fair at all_. "Leave. You’re making me sick _er_." 

But Victor, ever shameless, climbs into bed, forcing Yuuri to squish himself against the wall. Victor smells like the inn’s soaps, and Yuuri severely wishes he had a cold instead, nose too clogged to even process this, much less wonder when Victor started smelling less like his expensive cologne and more like something Yuuri associates with his home. 

"Yuuri," Victor says, rearranging the covers around them before lying down without invitation, smiling up at a sitting Yuuri. "You really are loved."

It’s a statement coming from nowhere—and Yuuri doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to, really, because he knows what Victor means, recognizes it in the constant traffic coming in and out of his room all day, recognizes it the way he probably never really did, as a child, as a teenager. He’d thought of it as weakness, as pity, to have to rely on others’ help—but maybe Yurio had a point, maybe Victor had a point, in saying that there’s nothing Yuuri can do about them all doing it because they want to, because they support him no matter what, and it’s about time he accepts that as fact and stop poking holes at it in order to justify something else he’s holding within himself. 

There’s an _I know_ bubbling in his throat, but he doesn’t get to say it as Victor asks, speaking up again, quieter this time; "Yuuri—do you mind me staying here?"

It’s a bit too late to ask that, when he’s already settled in, but Victor’s question suddenly feels much bigger than just this. Yuuri looks away, reaching behind him to turn off the light, and for a second, there’s only the darkness to greet him when he says; "I don’t mind at all."

It’s Victor’s arms that catches him when he slides under the covers, and it’s an all too familiar warmth—a warmth he’ll miss more than anything, he thinks, should the time come when it’s no longer there.

For far too long, Yuuri’s been too used to taking things for granted until he _has_ to miss them—Hasetsu, the New York apartment, everything else in between—but this time, it’s so much easier to sink into this comfort, so readily provided, so easily there, and for the first time, not question it, or push it away.

Yuuri doesn’t know, if he’d want to stay in New York, if he’d want to settle back into Hasetsu—he doesn’t quite want to know yet, just content in accepting that he’s left a piece of himself in both places. He has family in both places, has people who love him, and though it won’t get any easier, struggling with the intrusive thought of disappointing them and himself—he is, at least, like Victor, done running away from something that’s always been right there, if he just stretched out a hand. 

Yuuri closes his eyes and thinks about his world, about how it dwindles down to the thin walls of his New York apartment building and the creaky floors of Hasetsu. 

But there's Victor's arms, too. 

Victor’s world is so much bigger than Yuuri’s, he’s always known this, but here, waiting for Victor’s breathing to even out, not even thrown off-balance by sharing a bed with Yuuri, the world feels small, just the two of them, regardless of what awaits them, and what they’ve decided to do. 

Here, Victor has become something familiar, a tangible, reachable thing that's warm and knowable. 

And Yuuri can’t help but allow himself the slightest greed about this—about this warmth, about Victor being here, about this comfort. 

Yuuri falls asleep with _Salut D’Amour_ echoing in his head. 

 


	7. if i could tell him

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> music:
> 
>   * elgar's _[salut d'amour](https://open.spotify.com/track/6sd65KIIhGNnKAg0B3TLWY)_ \- péter nagy (thank you [byebyeholocene](http://byebyeholocene.tumblr.com/) for introducing me to this beauty!)
>   * elgar's _[salut d'amour](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7bagtkgbBI)_ \- heloise ph. palmer
> 


Something’s suspicious.

Victor talks a considerable lot on a good day, enough to straddle the line between thoughtful and childish, but he seems to be breaking his own record today. He’d taken Yurio’s place as Yuuri’s page-turner, and they had, for most of the day, worked in companionable silence, interspersed with frustrated groans and curious questions, but there’s been a nonstop flow of one-sided conversation from Victor since they left Minako’s studio.

Something’s not _right_ , and Yuuri has the mind to know it has something to do with today being his birthday, but Victor hasn’t brought it up at all—nothing past a cheerful _happy birthday_ this morning, which is normally how Yuuri would like it, seriously, except it doesn’t suit Victor at all.

Yuuri’s lost track of their conversation completely—Victor had jumped from asking Yuuri about tourist spots they haven’t visited to something else altogether, and at this point, Yuuri’s staring without really registering anything, just watching Victor’s mouth and hands move as he talks, eyes lighting up and eyebrows quirking.

Sunset suits Victor well; it softens him the way sunlight always does, but bathes him in a glow warmer than morning sunlight. Evening light makes Victor look relaxed, winding down from something exhausting instead of arming himself for a long day—which is how he’d looked, back when he and Yuuri used to take morning baths together, coming alive for something that shouldn’t demand the kind of performative concentration Victor always dons.

Victor under morning sunlight looks like a dream, but, like this, there’s no mistaking him for one. It’s the same sunset glow that bathes Yuuko and Nishigori in Yuuri’s memories, the same one that surrounds his memories of Mari picking him up from practice back when he was much smaller, and it grounds Victor firmly into Yuuri’s head and nowhere else—not the jacket sleeve of a hardcover, not a poster, not even something as far away as a _Meet & Greet _table.

He’s just here, the way Yuuri is here.

Comfort has always been there when it comes to this idea, but now, there’s this inexplicable sense of relief.

"Don’t you think so, Yuuri?"

Yuuri blinks, jerking into a stop. It’s a while before Victor’s teasing smile comes into focus, and he’s more flustered from that than being caught not listening. "What?"

Victor’s smile is too rooted in place to give in to a fake pout, but it tries anyway. "You’re not listening to me."

"I—" Yuuri looks away, noticing the street they’re walking down for the first time. This time, he’s embarrassed for forgetting he’s supposed to be suspicious, and his accusing tone is real as he says; "Where are we? How did we get here?"

Victor has led them through a detour, one that Yuuri definitely never showed to him himself, and one that he’s rightful to be suspicious of now. It doesn’t help that Victor just bats his eyelashes, still smiling, and shrugs. "The weather’s so nice out, I thought we could go for a walk."

Yuuri balks. "Um—no, it’s not."

The first snow of the year had arrived a day after Yuuri’s complete recovery from his fever, and the snowing has been steady since then—not snowing hard enough to require shovelling, but steadily enough all the same that it’s hard to ignore the tufts of snowflakes coming down around them.

But Victor just keeps smiling like Yuuri had made a joke, and it’s hard to keep being suspicious when the angry orange glow of the sky helps, a little bit, in forgetting that autumn’s officially behind them, replaced by the frost of winter and the cold that always comes with the end of the year.

Yuuri sighs. "Are you up to something?"

"I have no idea what you mean, Yuuri," Victor says, but that seems to finally slow him down, words losing their breathlessness as he relaxes into a more conversational stance. "You didn’t answer my question."

Victor didn’t really answer his, either, but Yuuri pegs this situation as a lost cause. "I didn’t hear what you said."

Victor hesitates—a split second where his mouth opens and nothing comes out, as if he’d cut himself off from saying the words. "I was saying," he starts, "how Hasetsu almost doesn’t feel real, being this quiet."

Yuuri understands that, understands the liminality that covers Hasetsu at dawn, at sunrise, at sunset.

It _is_ real, though. Not a talisman to be relied on, not a dream paradise to be missed, just a small city with the good fortune of being attached to Yuuri’s fondest memories and emotions.

And Victor’s now, too, Yuuri supposes, taking in Victor’s forward stare, eyes fixed on a distant Hasetsu Castle like he’s trying to get it permanently imprinted behind his eyelids.

The sunset, walking with Victor like this, everything else in between—all of it feels like a strange mix of all the memories he’s accumulated of Victor. Everything from Victor’s first week here to the sunset at Takashima Island to the look in Victor’s eyes, the last night of the Kunchi.

It’s so many things all at once, so many things Yuuri hadn’t even realized he’s collected, and it’s that knowledge that has Yuuri saying, before Victor can bring it up himself; "You’re leaving soon, aren’t you?"

Whenever Yuuri manages to take him aback, Victor always takes a second to just blink down at him—and Yuuri can’t tell if it’s genuine surprise at Yuuri, or Victor berating himself for being surprised. Either way, it buys Victor time to think about his answer, even if it only gives Yuuri a beat longer to second guess his own words and maybe take it back.

But then Victor’s nodding, looking away at the same time the back of his hand brushes against Yuuri, so close yet so far as they walk. "After the wedding."

"Oh." Yuuri’s throat feels dry. "Right after?"

"Yes." Victor sounds equally strained, if Yuuri’s looking for it.

But it could also very well just be his imagination.

"Is Yurio coming with you?"

Long silence. "Yes," Victor repeats. His voice is mild as always, but it sounds mechanical to Yuuri’s ears, toneless despite the conversational veneer. "I’m sorry."

Yuuri stares down at his feet. Left foot forward, right foot forward. Left, right, left, right. "Why are you sorry?"

"For being so sudden," Victor says. He sounds, to be fair, like a Hallmark card on sale. "I talked to your parents last night and—"

"My sister can drive you to the airport." Yuuri’s not really sure what he’s saying, just knows that his feet are the most captivating thing on the planet now as they walk up the slope, knees sluggish. "She picked me up last time."

A sigh. "Yuuri."

Yuuri, surprisingly, doesn’t feel upset. It’s not really sudden—Victor’s made it clear when he was leaving even from his first conversation with Yuuri. A part of Yuuri, however, had just pushed that aside, had pushed it aside because it was easier to be caught in the feeling that Hasetsu exists outside of time and space and responsibilities.

That might have been naive of him, selfish, and now that Victor’s the first to break away from the comfort he and Yuuri had both whisked themselves into—it’s a sobering thought, a realistic reminder that it’s not just Victor who has a life and a world to get back to.

"You talked to my parents first?" Yuuri says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. He really doesn’t. There isn’t a single coherent thought about this, nor is there anything beating in his chest urging him to blurt something out. "You don’t need their permission to leave."

"No, I know," Victor says, playing along. "But I owe your family a lot. For taking care of me."

When he words it like that, it makes it all the more ridiculous that Yuuri had forgotten Victor wasn’t an original part of his home. Victor had been an out-of-place puzzle piece that Yuuri came back to, not knowing why it’s there or how, but now it feels even weirder, to think that it hadn’t been there in the first place, and that, in a week’s time, it will be gone.

Yuuri’s whole body feels overwhelmed, as if his fever’s coming back—warm and cold at the same time, chest tight, throat scratchy. The slope feels too much to climb all of a sudden, and he huffs an incredulous laugh to himself as he slows down, hands on knees as he bends over and takes a deep breath.

The last time they were here, Victor had given him a piggyback.

He’d hugged Victor, and if he closes his eyes, head suddenly throbbing with something, he can remember exactly how it felt—warmth he hadn’t known before, but warmth so easy to seek out now, so easy to envision, because it’s been present much more consistently than it hasn’t.

"Yuuri." Victor sounds hesitant again, a child without the words for what he wants to articulate. "Look at me."

Yuuri does, because it’s reflex now, instinct, because it’s impossible to _not_ look at Victor—and Victor’s face is too open, too honest, too _ready_ to say something. It has expectations and standards and questions written all over it, and it’s too much for Yuuri’s brain to process when it’s still whirring from the full realization of Victor’s departure nearing.

So he doesn’t give Victor the chance to talk, straightening up so fast he almost topples over. He doesn’t offer a hug or relent to a piggyback this time, just rushes away, body breaking into a run as he calls over his shoulder, ignoring the blank look of shock on Victor’s face; "I’ll race you back to Yu-topia!"

His head feels so _full_ , cluttered, at odds with his how his chest feels, and he’s not really thinking about anything as he runs, not looking back to see if Victor’s following.

Yuuri knows it’s straight up childishness at this point, to not face something that’s so keen to look right back at him, but it’s difficult to unlearn habits and instincts.

He slows down in front of Yu-topia’s entrance arch, squinting at the darkness in the front yard.

The sunset’s near done by now, and the lights should be on—but there’s nothing, not outside, nor through the windows of the front of the house, everything too quiet and still that Yuuri’s suspicion immediately comes back.

He doesn’t get time to pursue that line of thinking, because then the lights are coming on as he slides the front door open, bulb after bulb in the receiving area.

He hears it first, his eyes struggling against the sudden light, but it takes him three more beats to realize what he’s listening to is _Happy Birthday_ , sung collectively in an enthusiastic chorus.

When his eyes finally adjust, there are two cakes in front of him.

One held by his mother, the other held by Yurio.

Yuuri blinks, and blinks, and blinks, not quite understanding, until Mari takes pity on him enough to say; "They’re not both for you, just so you know."

There’s a rattle behind Yuuri, and it’s inevitable that he turns to meet Victor’s eyes. Luckily, too, as he falls witness to the exact way Victor’s eyes widen in surprise, then confusion, and then pleasant shock as the realization sets in.

"Vicchan said he won’t be around to celebrate his birthday with us," says Yuuri’s mother, beaming. It’s infectious, and Yuuri feels his surprise give way to warmth. "So we thought we’d celebrate both of yours at the same time."

As if for emphasis, the group rallied around her and Yurio erupt in a gentle "Happy birthday!"—childish, almost, a little comical and entirely unnecessary for people Yuuri and Victor’s age, but it has Yuuri wanting to smile as he runs his gaze through the small group. His family, some regulars, Yuuko, Nishigori, Minako-sensei.

They all smile at him when he makes eye contact, barring Yurio, and it’s the last sign Yuuri needs to finally allow himself a small smile, biting down on his bottom lip.

He glances off to his side to see Victor staring, awed, at the cake Yurio’s holding—at the cake, then at Makkachin, sitting beside Yuuri’s mother and Yurio. Then at Yuuri, face naked in innocent surprise.

Eye contact with Victor always feels like a conversation in itself, words either unspoken or unneeded. Yuuri can read the sentiment in Victor’s expression now, though—the tension still there from their unfinished conversation from earlier, a question about why Yuuri’s family is even celebrating Victor’s birthday. Underneath it all, though, is something steady amidst the flickering gratitude, and it feels natural, for Yuuri to disregard everything else, to consciously soften his smile, and to say; "Shall we blow the candles at the same time?"

Victor’s smile is almost instinctive, unthinking, and no one has to count for either of them as they both lean over the candles.

A birthday wish always holds weight to it—there is the knowledge, the awareness, that it won’t come true, but there’s also the childish belief that it won’t hurt, to wish, to spare a quiet thought if only for ritual’s sake.

In the past five years, Yuuri has wished for so many different things; he’s wished on cupcakes baked by Phichit last minute, he’s wished on grocery-bought cake, he’s wished on custom-made bakery-ordered loaves. He has, on more than one occasion, believed in the power of believing, in the mere significance of forcing yourself to do something because you believe—know—that you can.

This time, looking around him, at family and friends he hasn’t seen in five years celebrating his birthday like they always have, at Yurio, at Victor, Yuuri’s mind comes up with nothing to wish for.

Except, maybe, to have more of this, and to never forget what this feels like.

But that thought fades, too, as he and Victor blow the candles out to soft applause and cheering. As Yuuri’s father swings an arm around Victor’s shoulder. As he spots Yuuko and Nishigori talking to a flushed Yurio. As Yuuri catches his sister’s attention from where she is in the corner of it all, smiling at him soft and private and tender.

As his mother wraps an arm around him, pulling him close in a hug that he has no reason to miss as it’s happening, but one that he feels all sorts of things for now—early homesickness, nostalgia, settling in with the knowledge that he _will_ come back to this, will come back to his family, his hometown, because he’s done missing things that _are_ there, that will always be there, no matter what.

In a week’s time, it will be quiet, empty: the chaos of the wedding done, Yurio and Victor gone, and Yuuri—Yuuri about to leave all over again, to go back to New York and figure things out from scratch.

He’d promised Phichit he’ll be back by Christmas, and that, at least, is a deadline he can match.

But for now, right now, as he meets Victor’s eyes from across the room, magnetized, it occurs to Yuuri, dawns upon him with startling clarity and emotion, that both of them are completely and undeniably part of this house—of this family, this town—and not even leaving can change that.

 

 

 

 

 

Not unlike the fever that Hasetsu fell into before the Kunchi, the inn gets caught up in its own systematic frenzy in the days leading up to the wedding. There’s always something to help with, something to do, something to practice for. Time flies by like that, Yurio and Yuuri and Victor at Minako’s more often than not, leaving early and coming home late.

Caught up in a routine like that, with nothing but constants, with time represented by nothing else but its passing, it’s easy to forget that things won’t ease down to what it was before once the wedding passes. It’s easy to forget that the wedding is their last checkpoint for this mini-vacation in Hasetsu, the beginning of one last measure before this song dies back into silence.

But they don’t talk about it. No one brings it up.

Victor doesn’t pick his conversation back up with Yuuri.

It’s like nothing happened, like no one’s leaving.

It doesn’t hang heavy—just sits there, a reminder should someone search their brains for it. But they continue on circling around each other, reluctant to speak if only to wring out as much of what’s left of the idealism and escapism they both went to Hasetsu for.

They’re both too responsible, attached to their old lives in some way if not completely, but they still have this little bubble of time and space left.

So the words remain unsaid.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s not the first time Yuuri’s attending a wedding, but it definitely feels like it; he’s never been so aware of all the little things that go into one event, too many strings working around jerking at the same thing. Come the day of the actual wedding and the whole affair has become mindless—he shows up to the shrine not really registering anything, and it’s no surprise he ends up at Nishigori’s beck and call in the hours leading up to the actual ceremony.

He sits between Victor and Minako during the wedding, and it’s an exercise in barely moving. Every motion feels like it’s saying volumes to the people on either side of him, so he sits prim and stiff, hands in his lap, watching Yuuko the entire time.

She’s beautiful, of course she is, and there’s nothing easier than staring at her, at her soft smiles, at her eyes crinkling, and understand why people in their school had so steadfastly called her Madonna.

As both Yuuko and Nishigori stand parallel to each other, preparing for their vows—Yuuri feels, for a second, overwhelmed with emotion. There’s a voice in his head wondering when they all grew up so fast— _how,_ when he still feels like a kid sometimes, uncertain, lost. He’s overwhelmed with the knowledge that time can go so fast, that things can change, that variables in a story can end up anywhere.

Yuuko and Nishigori’s story is theirs, but there is a part of it that is intertwined with Yuuri’s, the way his own life and future is irreversibly intertwined with the childhood he spent with them.

It’s so convenient, to single out a story as exclusive of another, to rely on that the way he’s always relied on Victor existing in another category.

That’s impossible now, because whether or not they wish to stay, the point where Victor and Yuuri’s stories intersect is as equally irreversible.

He allows himself a side glance at Victor.

He’s not even surprised anymore, when he finds Victor staring back.

 

 

 

 

 

The nervousness sets in as Yuuri’s helping transfer chairs in the reception area.

It’s Mari that sends him out to get some fresh air, so he drags himself outside, trying to count breaths and not beats. Pre-performance anxiety is no stranger, and he _knows_ what to do with himself—but it doesn’t make the ordeal any easier on him.

He sits down in the nearest empty hallway, back sliding against the wall. The heat in his stomach is still lurching away, though, and he feels it drop further when he hears footsteps behind him.

"Yuuri?"

His sharp inhale is quick to be released in a relieved exhale as he looks up to see Victor there, hands in his pockets. He’s dressed a little too formally now, with the ceremony over, and Yuuri can’t help the tell-tale flip-flop of both his chest and stomach when they make eye contact.

He swallows. "Sorry, do they need me in there?"

"No, no." Victor comes up close, but he doesn’t touch Yuuri past a shoulder bump as he sits down, too. "I saw you on your way out and—"

He doesn’t finish the thought, and Yuuri doesn’t know what he’s about to say, either. He doesn’t ask, because an unfinished thought with Victor is the same as backspacing on an entire line in a story, and waits instead.

Eventually, Victor takes Yuuri’s hand, as always; he’s come to understand that touch is an anchoring thing for Victor, rare enough, but constant as soon as he’s comfortable. This doesn’t feel like it’s for Victor’s sake, though, as fingers slide in between Yuuri’s, firm.

"Your hands are shaking, Yuuri," Victor says. "Yurio said that I should tell you—to open up your hands and relax—or else they'll lock up." 

Yuuri doesn’t answer, just focuses on Victor’s hand. 

He feels more than hears Victor sigh. "Is there something I can do?"

Yuuri pulls up his knees against his chest and stares down at his shoes. He doesn’t remove his hand from Victor’s, keeps his hand right where it is, physical touch that’s all too accessible now, but won’t be by tomorrow.

It feels too unprecedented, when he says; "I don’t dream, when I sleep next to you."

He doesn’t look up, doesn’t see how Victor reacts to that. And somehow—somehow—he finds it in himself to add; "Talk to me." He pauses, second-guessing his own words. "Just—talk to me."

He expects confusion, but this is Victor. Victor who has, maybe, understood Yuuri from the beginning in a way he’s never understood himself. It’s one thing to see yourself through your own head and your own thoughts, another to focus on how other people see you. But to have someone who looked at you from the start and saw a kindred spirit, who recognized something that you yourself had been unable to grasp at the time—that was Victor.

That _is_ Victor.

"When I saw you play, at Warsaw—" His voice is a low timber when he speaks, the sort it gets when it’s late at night or early in the morning, and it’s this that Yuuri will miss most—the rawest form of the storyteller in Victor, the innocent kind with so much to say without care for how he’s saying them. It’s Victor speaking bare words, not layered the way his writing is, just straightforward and _him_. His own voice. "It felt like you were searching for something."

He stops there, clearly waiting for a response, but Yuuri doesn’t have one for him.

Victor hums, like he’d expected this. "Do you see, Yuuri? It _felt_ like you were searching for something. It wasn’t just through sound that I heard that longing, it wasn’t just through the expression on your face. It was in every single thing in your performance—not just every note, but the way you played like the notes weren’t separate from you and your feelings at all. It was as if—" Another pause, pregnant with contemplation. Yuuri fights the urge to look at him. "There’s something special, about hearing and seeing you play. Music becomes you." 

There’s two ways he could mean that—could mean that music suits Yuuri, could mean that somehow, after all the hours spent on it and all the thought and effort put into it, Yuuri can manage to embody music. Victor offers no clarification for which meaning he intends, and that’s _so_ like him. 

For a writer, Victor is hardly a romantic about the things in his own life. But it’s always other things outside of him that endlessly fascinate him, the curiosity boundless. And the way Victor describes Yuuri’s music feels like too much, feels like he should be reading it off pages instead of hearing it said so casually and so easily out loud.

If there _is,_ in any way, something special about seeing Yuuri perform, then it’s the same for hearing Victor speak, reading Victor’s words. 

Language and music serve the same purpose for each of them, maybe, at the end of day. 

And it’s in emotion that these two things intersect.

It still doesn’t make it any more bearable, looking up at Victor and realizing how much he means it. That for all that there was no direct invitation at play in getting him to Hasetsu, Victor had been dead serious, in choosing to pursue whatever it is he’d felt, whatever it is that Yuuri had managed to convey. 

That when he says _there’s something special_ , he means it more than he’s ever meant the autographed note he’d left for Yuuri. 

This feels like it _matters_ —it feels more validating than anything to know that his performance had pulled someone in, that all the raw and vulnerable parts of himself that he bares to an audience every single time had not been for nothing. 

That somehow Yuuri had reached out, and, in the process, brushed against Victor’s hand. 

Victor articulates none of this, just offers Yuuri a smile. "Didn’t I say curiosity got me here?" he says. "Your music got me here."

"Curiosity killed the cat," Yuuri croaks out. His voice doesn’t sound like it’s his own. "You said." 

"And satisfaction brought it back," Victor says, without missing a beat. He squeezes Yuuri’s hand, and it’s a startling reminder that he was even holding it. "I’m sure I’m not the only person you’ve touched with your music, Yuuri. But I think, for tonight, the only person you need to reach are the newlyweds, no?"

"I know," Yuuri murmurs. "That’s the hard part."

"Then," Victor says, "if nothing else, play it for yourself."

Yuuri frowns. "But I—"

"If it’s too hard to play according to what they’re feeling," Victor says, "then play it according to how _you’re_ feeling." Matter-of-fact, a statement of something proven. "It doesn’t have to be the wedding kind of love. It can just be—love. In whatever form that may come in, for you. Or maybe nothing that can be described with one word at all."

These last few sentences come out wistful, and Yuuri will miss getting to see this, too—seeing the rough, longing contemplation always palpable on Victor’s face, despite how smooth and put-together he might seem in the face of an adoring audience. 

Yuuri, finally, squeezes Victor’s hand back. "I don’t think I ever said thank you."

Victor raises an eyebrow, but his face is too serious for it to come across as anything but. "For what?"

Yuuri doesn’t answer that, getting to his feet instead and tugging Victor up with him. "We have to go in."

Victor searches his face—unsubtle—but whatever he finds there sends his mouth quirking up into a genuine smile. He offers Yuuri an arm. "Shall we, then, Mr. Professional Pianist?"

There is, if Yuuri really thinks about it, something that’s been there between them since Victor had arrived. It’s not nameable—but it feels, at times, almost tangible. 

It feels significant, too, between two people whose livelihoods are reliant on things that exist out of touch, out of things solid and touchable. There’s a novelty in feeling that connection, the physicality and solidity of it, if only it comes in the form of an offered hand or arm.

Two points meeting, and a palpable representation of that.

Like now, as he takes Victor’s arm. 

"Yuuri? Ready?" 

Yuuri swallows. Nods. 

"Ready."

 

 

 

 

 

 

He’s not ready. 

He never really is; it’s not an achievable state, but the closest he can get to it is evening out his breath, careful inhales and exhales as he adjusts the stool in front of the piano, hands steadying. They feel clammy, and he lays them down on his knees for a few seconds, still breathing in and out.

The first thing he sees when he looks up are the newlywed Nishigoris, watching him with twin looks of expectance. It’s not the heavy kind, though, never the judging kind, just something almost proud, almost excited. It shoots a similar kind of excitement up Yuuri’s veins, and he has to give them both a smile, part _congratulations_ , part _this one’s for you_.

They understand, even if the words aren’t spoken into a microphone the way all the other speeches were.

He rolls his shoulders slightly, a habit from childhood that he thinks he sees Minako-sensei smirk at from one of the front tables. Yurio and Victor are both out there, no doubt watching, but their gazes don’t feel heavy on him, either.

Yuuri feels near light, sitting there. It’s the first time he’s been in front of an audience since the Chopin Competition, and it’s a stark contrast. No bright, hot lights on him, just a well-lit room full of people that have watched him grown up, that have grown up _with_ him, even though names and faces and old memories are at best hazy at the edges now. 

This is an amalgamation of all the things he’s had from childhood to now, all compacted into one space, waiting to listen to one song. 

He barely hears his own intake of breath as he puts his hand on the keys.

And starts playing. 

_Salut D'Amour_ starts slow, one key here and then two, then three. Yuuri holds his breath for a couple of measures, letting his fingers dance to where they need to be.

Yurio told him before that, when he’d played the nocturne, there had been too much emotion. And Yuuri had thought he didn’t know how else to play, didn’t know what else to do than to embody and be consumed, because being immersed into feelings translated into sound is easier than making sense of his own.

_Salut D’Amour,_ surprisingly, doesn’t feel like that. 

It doesn’t overwhelm, it doesn’t consume. 

The music starts picking up, leaving behind the mellow slowness of the first few keys. Yuuri doesn’t look at the sheets, just stares down at his own hands, feels his wrists and his shoulders move the way he wants them to. It feels liberating, and he doesn’t know if it’s the piece or his own playing that’s getting him there, but he doesn’t fight back the smile that tugs at his mouth. Small, but sincere.

_Salut D’Amour_ feels like stepping into freshly cut grass with bare feet, something so idyllic it can’t be real, but feels like it anyway; it’s warm sunlight on his face, an endless blue sky above him. 

It’s Yuu-chan’s laughter when a puppy licks her face, it’s double popsicles from the convenience store split with Mari after she picks Yuuri up from practice. 

It’s Minako-sensei ruffling his hair proudly after a successful performance, it’s the taste of his mother’s _katsudon_. 

It’s the booming laughter in the inn when his father gets drunk enough to start dancing around, the sound of celebration and cheer permeating every corner of their family home.

It’s memories upon memories, all happy, all warm.

All loving.

_Love slows down, you know?_

It’s also the lilt of Victor’s voice, the rise and fall of it as he talks, as he reads his own words to Yuuri. It’s Victor’s laugh, always starting low and quiet until he can’t really help it anymore. It’s Victor’s featherlight touch, and his embrace, warm and welcoming.

Beyond that, it’s the feeling of being known, of being understood. Of someone looking at him and seeing the gray area between how he sees himself and how he really must be, if looking externally had only been easier.

 _It’s quiet and gentle,_ Yuuko had said, _but it’s just something that is, not slow or fast, just something you feel._

Quiet, like his dreams when he falls asleep next to Victor.

Gentle, like the glide of the keys and the way the high notes drift into each other, like how it feels to be on the receiving end of Victor’s smile and gaze. 

To be in that position and know that whatever Victor asked him to do, he would do it.

Yuuri doesn't know love—but it might be this, it might be learning someone bit by bit, seeing new parts of them and falling for each one, a puzzle that takes more of Yuuri's heart as each new piece falls into place. 

But no—Yuuri thinks, nearing the end of the song—it isn’t as if he doesn’t _know_ love. He does; he knows it in the form it exists in between family, friends. He knows it, even, in the kind of understanding that can exist between strangers, regardless of how similar or different their backgrounds may be.

Love is something that exists in different forms, in different places, but what doesn’t change is that it’s everywhere, especially in his life, just waiting to be acknowledged, just waiting to be received, be felt.

 _Salut D’Amour_ had felt diluted because Yuuri was trying to constrain all the love that there is into one performance—a feat that strikes him as impossible now, as he sits there enveloped in it.

Playing the piano is a partnership, but it’s a relationship that boils down to the few minutes the pianist spends on stage. A make it or break it situation each time, a demand to convey all that he can in one go, in one sitting.

But _Salut D’Amour_ feels like channeling just a small thread belonging to something that can _not_ be constrained, the way he himself shouldn’t be. The way his whole world shouldn’t be diluted into the often treacherous space in his head, his whole career into the performances he’d failed.

 _Look out, out, out_ , says Celestino’s voice in his head.

So Yuuri lets _Salut D’Amour_ build up, build up until it's bright and open, balcony doors opening into summer air, love bursting free of its shy confines. 

It almost feels disappointing, when he has to slow it back down. 

One, two, three keys. 

And then nothing. Silence. The end of a song. 

It’s the sort of slow descent into quiet that rings in Yuuri’s ears. He stares at his hands for a long time before he even registers the applause, and then he’s looking up, mouth parted. 

It’s polite applause, at best, reminiscent of the kind he’d gotten from a panel of judges during end-of-term reviews—but it sounds thundering to him, deafening. 

Even so, he finds the Nishigoris’ eyes first. 

Takeshi gives him a thumbs-up, and somehow, _somehow_ , it is in itself equal validation to the way Yuuko brings her hands around her mouth, her eyes visibly watery even from this far away. 

One of them walks forward, because the next thing Yuuri realizes, able to properly hear again, is Yuuko hugging him—or him hugging her, it’s hard to tell with the awkward tangle of limbs.

"Thank you, Yuuri-kun," she whispers, right in his hear. "That was beautiful." 

Yuuri doesn’t know if he actually ends up saying anything back, but Yuuko’s teary smile as she pulls away seems to remove the necessity of a reply.

He feels proud, in a way—not because of the success, in particular, but just to be able to do it, to finish it, to have no qualms about how he felt while playing it. 

It’s awkward, when Yuuri meets Victor’s eyes where he’s sitting with Yurio. Thinking of Victor while playing _Salut D’Amour_ felt like asking himself a question, and meeting Victor’s eyes now is like directly asking for that answer. 

Yuuri feels his chest tighten. But he manages a smile, just to get one in turn from Victor. And he does—he does get one, gets one as pretty and tender as it always is. 

He catches Yurio’s eyes next, and there’s a grudging congratulatory sense to the face he makes at Yuuri. But there is, too, a reminder of his words from his first week in Hasetsu. 

_Stop asking questions when the answer is staring you right in the face._

Minako gathers him in a rough hug next, and he’s startled into immediately hugging back, but the image of Victor’s smile remains stamped in his head. 

It falls in step with the tune of _Salut D’Amour_ still echoing in his ears, falls in step with the feeling that has been building up for the last few weeks.

It doesn’t fade for the rest of the night.

 

 

 

 

 

This time, it’s Yuuri that seeks out Victor.

The gathering has dissolved into solid groups by now: clusters in the middle of the room swaying more to Yurio’s idle piano-playing than they are actually dancing, and tables pushed together to accommodate the growing number of intoxicated guests. Victor’s nowhere to be found among the organized chaos—but it only takes Yuuri a few steps out the back door to find him, leaning against a corner pole of the back porch.

It’s dark and cold outside, silent save for the muted music from inside underlining the occasional gust of wind. It isn’t tense, exactly, but something about going up to Victor like this, alone on a chill December evening, feels like being a string pulled taut. He feels _full_ , about to spill over with things that need to be said, except he can’t find the words for them, can’t find anything except the mix of dread and expectation making itself at home in his chest.

Victor immediately turns when he hears Yuuri’s first steps forward. His smile is as muted. "Hello."

One word, and Yuuri’s mind quiets down, mellows into a more manageable pace.

"Hi," he says, and he finds himself whispering as he walks up to lean against the porch railing next to Victor. "Did the party scare you away? Do you regret accepting Yuuko’s invitation?"

Victor laughs, quiet and a little delayed. "No, no, no, it didn’t—I don’t," he says. "Celebrations here are always fun. It’s like how it is in the inn, just—bigger. I don’t regret a thing."

It sounds like small talk for the sake of making small talk—which, while something Victor is good at, is a habit he’s long since shed. Victor avoided things by pursuing other things, not through stalling like this, and being so obvious about it that Yuuri doesn’t even swallow back his sigh.

He knows there’s something they’re not talking about; they’ve conditioned themselves not to, in being here, in staying here. There was a specific space they’d allocated for the things they hadn’t allowed themselves to think or talk about while in Hasetsu, nothing past rumination, relaxed in acknowledging that even the near future pales in comparison.

There’s nothing to hide behind now, and Yuuri feels like he’s standing on a different stage for the first time.

"What about this?" he says softly. "Do you regret anything about coming here?"

Yuuri doesn’t know why he asks it, doesn’t know what he would do if Victor says _yes_.

But of course he doesn’t say that, just looks at Yuuri with an expression too unreadable in the lack of light. "Do you remember what I said? About questions and answers?"

Yuuri nods, slow.

"‘When I consider my life, I am appalled to find it a shapeless mass,’" Victor says, and only the intonation of his voice hints he’s even quoting words not his. "‘I think that I recognize the working of fate, but too many paths lead nowhere at all—‘" He looks up, quirks the smallest smile Yuuri has ever seen on him. "‘—and too many sums add up to nothing.’"

Yuuri remains still.

"I thought—why do I have nothing to write about my own life?" Victor continues. "So it was quite the surprise, when I saw you banging away at that piano like you couldn’t bear otherwise, and then talk about it so casually when asked—like you didn’t even think about it, just felt because you had no other choice but to feel. You had so much to say, to feel, and you didn’t even need to find words in any language to show people that." His tone doesn’t lose its conversational touch, even as he reaches up to brush his knuckles against Yuuri’s cheek. "Could you blame me, for packing up and coming to Hasetsu as soon as I could?"

Yuuri doesn’t think Victor’s really expecting an answer—and he can’t give one, either, has no choice but to stare up at Victor and wait it out, wait until he can breathe again, until his chest no longer feels like it's about to cave in.

"I came here because I didn't want to find that answer," Victor says, knuckles unfurling so he can hold Yuuri’s cheek. "And yet I found it here. Funny how that works out."

"Funny," Yuuri echoes, but Victor is too close, and it comes out a shaky whisper. 

"I really wish I could take you with me," Victor murmurs. 

Yuuri knows for a fact that it’s him that leans in first, a physical urge more than it is anything he’s emotionally or mentally prepared for. Their jackets squeak against each other as Victor tilts his head, fitting his mouth better against Yuuri’s, and Yuuri’s brain blanks out, quiets down into white noise. 

It’s the kind of thing that’s been building up in his gut for so long he’d forgotten it wasn’t supposed to be there, that feeling, and everything from the moment his lips touch Victor’s and onwards just blurs into a general physical feeling, hazy at the edges but sharp like nothing else where his body connects against someone else’s.

Victor is all warmth—and Yuuri finds it unfair, for Victor to have talked up Yuuri’s ability to feel emotions when he himself conveys so much with touch, whether given or withheld. For all that he is a master with words, Victor is the first person in Yuuri’s life that has been a physical constant, a presence always noted by his tangibility. 

He’s a gut feeling, an undercurrent of emotion constantly pulsing through Yuuri, and kissing Victor feels like a culmination of that, a feeling that has gone ignored for too long that it pools hot and eager to be sated in Yuuri’s chest.

All Yuuri had wanted since he’d come here was to be able to live in the moment, to stay within a memory and know what it’s like to _live_ in it, not just remember it. To feel the actual thing more than the idea of it. It feels most appropriate now, with Victor, and Yuuri tries to pay attention to Victor’s mouth, to the feeling of his hand against Yuuri’s cheek.

A hand that has been there so often and so much that it immediately feels wrong when Victor suddenly pulls away.

Yuuri registers the sound of the back door opening too late, and he doesn’t even have time to be surprised before he’s turning to see Yurio.

Yuuri expects him to say something, to ask anything, but instead he gets something too fast and too abrupt for it to be in English Yuuri can understand. Yurio doesn’t even sound irritated, even if the characteristic edge to his voice remains.

It sounds like a reminder—of time, maybe, of the fact that they have a flight tomorrow.

That fact finally cements, cold and hard in Yuuri’s mind, and he swallows as Yurio leaves them alone out into the porch.

"Yuuri—"

"Do you remember what _I_ said?" Yuuri says, so out of the blue he surprises even himself. There are a million other things they could be talking about right now, a million other things to be discussing, but there’s one that rises to the forefront of Yuuri’s priorities, because it needs, all of a sudden, to be said. Put into words where he hasn’t been able to do so with so much else. "Because I mean it. I _mean_ it. You’re always welcome here."

In Hasetsu. In Yuuri’s life.

The implication reaches Victor loud and clear—Yuuri can see that it does, and it fills him with a bittersweet sort of acceptance, to know that he has no problem reading Victor’s eyes now.

"I know," Victor says. For a moment, he looks like he’s about to reach out for Yuuri again—but he doesn’t. He doesn’t move at all. "You are, too."

It’s a confusing statement to make, but Yuuri thinks he understands. He and Victor have learned to navigate around direct words, sure, but some sentiments make themselves loud and clear regardless of language.

"I—" _I don’t know what’s happening_ , is Yuuri’s dominant thought. He shakes his head, stares down at the ground. "I need to get back to—I need to get back inside."

"I know," Victor repeats. Yuuri doesn’t look up to check what expression he’s making.

He doesn’t look up or back at all, as he leaves Victor there in the cold evening, oddly reminiscent of all those days and nights ago that he’d walked away from his first real conversation with Victor, outside his family’s inn.

Months later and he would wonder what he could have said, what he should have done instead of pulling away and panicking at the first chance.

But for tonight, he just slips back into the wedding, and doesn’t let himself think for the rest of the night.

 

 

 

 

 

Victor kisses him again, right before he leaves for the airport.

Just one at the top of Yuuri’s head, so absent-minded that Yuuri knows people are looking away from the unexpected, unthinking intimacy of it. 

Yuuri’s the last of the small crowd gathered to say goodbye to both Yurio and Victor, and when Victor reaches him, following an awkward handshake with Yurio that turned more into a polite high-five—when Victor reaches him, there’s promise in his eyes, an unspoken _we’ll see each other again_.

It’s too idyllic of a promise, in a world as big as theirs, in a life as big as Victor’s, but it’s what Yuuri holds on to when he accepts Victor’s hug.

Before he pulls away, Victor murmurs; "Thank you."

_I didn’t do anything_ , Yuuri doesn’t say. _I should be thanking you_. 

He just nods—nods because that’s all he’s good at, nowadays. 

It’s here that Victor drops a kiss on Yuuri’s head, and it’s this that is the last thing Yuuri remembers. By the time he looks back up, the car’s pulling away.

And Yuuri has to marvel at that, how quickly someone can be gone from a place.

 

 

 

 

 

Later, Yuuri will blame his inability to process goodbyes for his lack of direct action in the days leading up to his departure. 

There’s a part of him that slows down, after Victor leaves first, and it continues on until the day of his own flight, pervasive, hanging heavy. 

The only thing worse than leaving is being this _aware_ of leaving—of having a deadline, of being constrained by the things that you can or cannot do within that time frame. Yuuri understands that, understands that it might have been easier, if he never found out the exact day Victor was going to leave, if he’d been able to process that departure as anything but an end.

But there it is; Yuuri’s incapability of quick, thoughtful responses proves itself a prominent part of his life yet again, and all he feels is _tired_ , because he doesn’t want to be regretting the thing he didn’t tell Victor before he left, not when he’s supposed to be spending these last few days _living_ in his home as much as possible.

Only that’s difficult, too. Seeing his family home through Victor's eyes had felt like re-learning it—like revisiting it and having to see the place for the first time all over again, relive what it felt like to grow up in it, what it felt like to leave it. 

And it feels like a whole different place that he’s leaving now. When he’d first left, he’d thought he’d miss the hot springs, the creaky wooden floors, the people existing in his life as individuals. 

It’s more than that now, and yet less. He’ll miss the inn terribly, but more than that he’ll miss his sister’s voice when she sings while folding towels, and the faint smell of cigarettes hanging around her clothes as she makes dinner. His father’s laugh, how quickly he can down full bottles of alcohol. How his mother’s eyes crinkle a little bit when she’s trying to hold back a laugh. How much it hurts to be pinched by Minako-sensei, how warm it feels to be hugged. How Nishigori has a habit of frowning as he listens to someone talk, hanging on to every word, and how Yuuko is the opposite, smiling as she listens, a perfect match in how thoughtful and serene they can both be.

It’s the smaller things, the things he knows he’ll forget first; he’s already starting to lose track of his memories of Yurio wrinkling his nose at the idea of the Nishigoris someday having children, of Victor tinkling away out of curiosity when Yuuri allows himself a break from the piano. 

These things accumulate, creep into his thoughts and his life, the way Victor did, quietly crawling into every crevice of thought Yuuri has to spare, walking into his life just like that—and leaving just like that.

He doesn’t want his parents to feel the same way about him, he really doesn’t, but all he has to offer his family as they drop him off at the airport is a clogged throat, incapable of producing sounds the way his hands can. 

So he hugs each of them in turn, almost frantic about savoring each embrace. 

They all feel different in his arms, and if he can’t remember everything, he can at least remember this—his father’s chuckle in his ear, his mother’s softness, Nishigori’s firmness. Touch says so much about people, says as much as their words can, and Yuuri feels silly, to have been starved of it for so long that it isn’t the first thing he missed, when he’d first left.

It is now. It’s the thing he already misses before he’s even left, as he pulls away from Mari.

She grabs him by one arm, though, keeping him in place. 

"I know," Yuuri says, before she can say anything. "I won’t disappear on you again."

Mari softens so easily at that. "I know that," she says. "That wasn’t what I was going to say."

Yuuri frowns, confused, but she lets him go—so abruptly he stumbles a bit backward.

She ruffles his hair, and there’s no denying, no hiding from the fondness on her face, stripped bare for once without the urgency and ambience of the inn to work around. Like this, she’s just Mari-nee-san, who used to skip class to catch variety shows of her idols and who kicked Yuuri in her sleep whenever they shared a sleeping space. Like this, she’s just his sister—his sister who, despite having every right and reason not to, still trusts and believes in him.

"You really are my favorite sister," Yuuri says, smiling.

Mari rolls her eyes. "Wow, I’m so honored," she says, sardonic, but that melts away quickly, too. It’s rare to see her so openly contemplative, and Yuuri lets her look her fill, lets her study him. "When did you grow up so fast, little brother?" 

It’s not the question Yuuri was expecting, and it gets a laugh startled out of him. "I’m not much of a grown-up at all," he says, honest.

Mari sighs, lifting one shoulder up in a shrug. "You don’t have to have everything figured out," she says. "No one actually does—no matter what age they are."

Yuuri forces himself to make a face, but it is, somewhere deep within the ache in his chest, probably something he’d always wanted to hear from her. 

"Besides, if you need another break," Mari continues, "you know you can always come—" She breaks off, staring off at a point past Yuuri before rephrasing; "You can always come back."

"Home," Yuuri says, because he owes her that much. He owes her and his whole family and Hasetsu that much. "I can always come back home."

Mari, underneath the blankness coming back on her face, looks relieved. "Yeah," she says. "Yeah. Home."

 

 

 

 

 

There are a lot of other ways Yuuri could have spent the last month. 

A lot of other places he could have gone, a lot of choices he could have made.

But as it is, he’d ended up in Hasetsu, Japan, back where he came from with nothing but thoughts upon thoughts and doubts upon doubts. 

He isn’t any less doubtful, when he leaves Japan that December, isn’t any more sure about the prospect of his future.

This time, though, he’s not leaving burdened by the awareness that his return would be conditional.

This time, he leaves sure that no matter what, no matter when, he will have this small port city and its people to fall back to.

And it will be enough.

 


	8. you will be found

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> music:
> 
>   * it's really just _yuri on ice_ on the piano, but [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26I1hs1bg3o) is the cover i used as reference.
> 


If Hasetsu and NYC had anything in common, it’s that it’s hard to find your own pace once you’ve gotten swept up in the hum and drum of the place. 

Where Hasetsu was a liminal space, though, detached and silent and slow, New York is in constant flux—so constant it’s almost routine to be exposed to that unpredictability of daily life. The only other constant there seems to be is a lack of time, like somehow, where the days and hours used to stretch when Yuuri woke up in the inn, there was little to no time in NYC to do everything he needed to, because there were always people doing more, more, more with the same amount of hours in a day. 

It’s motivating, too, that way, albeit exhausting, and by the time the holidays are in full swing, Yuuri feels urgency in his bones, so restless it itches. The days leading up to Christmas blur into one conflated routine: focusing on his self-composition, wrestling with the temptation of opting out of performing it, regular phone calls to the inn, listening to Phichit hum to himself as he works on his own piece.

Yuuri had expected the New York apartment to feel different, to feel smaller, somehow, tighter. But it doesn’t; it feels the exact same way when he comes back as it did when he left it. Not a single thing was moved, even, and everything about it remains as familiar as it should be, unaltered. Phichit treats him like he’d never left, the only indication of which are his repeated _I missed you so much_ ’s and, like this, his time spent in Hasetsu feels even less real, like he’d dreamt up the experience during some sort of self-induced post-modern coma.

Sometimes, he wonders if Victor feels the same.

In the opinion of most media outlets willing to talk about it, Victor Nikiforov—fiction writer, 27 years old—had taken back the space he’d vacated as smoothly as he did most things. Radio show back to restart on New Year’s Day, with a special announcement coinciding with the new season. Most people peg Victor as the type to love grand gestures when it came to dealing with his audience, and this is no different, because the fans are even more excited to hear the news when preceded by a sudden, unexplained disappearance.

It’s all very Victor, and just like that, it feels like he’s assimilated back. 

There, too, he belongs, a fixture as untouchable now as he had been real to Yuuri back in Hasetsu, and the dissonance isn’t lost on him. Now, though, Yuuri knows to dig past the surface, knows to remind himself that Victor isn’t actually the hyperbole of an accomplished person that the media paints him as. It’s almost mechanical, the thoughtless Frankenstein work that goes beyond piecing together the public Victor from the scraps provided by essentially everyone _except_ Victor. 

Half of Yuuri understands that he _did_ just spend the last month living with a Forbes _30 Under 30_ honoree, but the other half just mostly remembers the cooing noises Victor makes at Makkachin, and the smell of tempura batter that had clung to him, almost unshakeable, in the last few days at Hasetsu.

Still, Yuuri doesn’t make the extra effort to follow what Victor’s doing.

It’s like someone had pressed _pause_ while they were in Hasetsu, everything off the record, time momentarily in limbo, and now that they’re both back where they should have been in those months, _play_ once again pressed, it seems that life and time is catching up to both of them as much as they are trying to catch up with it. 

It’s difficult to reconcile this and that, doesn’t know where they’re supposed to overlap, if he and Victor are technically friends now, if he and Yurio can start greeting each other at competitions now. He’d gained clarification on his relationship with his family and childhood friends, sure, but this time around it feels like he got different relationships to replace the uncertainty, only moored by distance and a lack of communication that Yuuri refuses to bridge.

The problem with spending a month without care for the consequences is that it really is so easy to pretend it never happened, even easier to convince himself it didn’t, and he’s left with scraps of things that he doesn’t know what to do with, like phrases and fragments that can’t even form questions long or coherent enough to be answered.

His self-composition feels the exact same way. 

Yuuri knows what he wants it to sound like, knows the kind of pieces he needs to get to that, but it’s hard to reconcile the first half of the song with the second half. It sounds weaker, like he’s bringing the song to something lower, a smaller version of it instead of bringing it up, freeing it the way he did with _Salut D’Amour_. 

And that doesn’t feel like enough, with a piece he’s supposed to be composing to talk about his life, to finally find closure in the decisions he made five years ago.

If he’d felt frustration with _Salut D’Amour_ , it’s even worse now with this piece, the helplessness sitting cold in his gut. 

Phichit has even installed a system for him: if Yuuri hasn’t been productive for three hours and is _still_ forcing himself to, then he is bound by the sacred rules of their apartment to at least leave his room and not look at anything music-related for a minimum of thirty minutes.

This is largely hypocritical of Phichit, who Yuuri was still yet to see without _his_ sheet music in the past two weeks he’s been back, but arguing with his best friend and roommate has, from the very beginning, been a futile cause.

So Yuuri drags himself away from his desk now, turning off the lamp. 

He stands in the near darkness of his room for a good two minutes, staring at the sunset out the window. 

Life in Hasetsu had a soundtrack of its own. The sound of frying oil in the kitchen, the rush of water in the small fountain by the springs, the crash of the waves in Hasetsu Beach, the seagulls high above. Sound has a way of transporting people to places, of building whole worlds the way words can, but it’s hard to think about it now, because amidst the sounds of cars honking outside and the muted hum of Phichit’s television show coming from the living room, NYC has its own music, too, as familiar to Yuuri’s ears as a well-learned recital piece.

He walks out into the living room at the exact moment one of the drama main leads yells; " _I don’t want you to leave because I'm in love with you_!"

There's a wheeze, and it takes Yuuri a whole half beat to track it back to Phichit, who's curled up against his usual side of the couch, bowl of tortilla chips on his lap and one hand slapped firmly against his mouth in shock. 

There's a moment of silence onscreen, the actors unmoving, stewing in what seems to be a significant revelation, and there's a moment, too, where everything in their living room is quiet and still. 

Phichit says; "Oh my god." and his soap opera jumps back into action—only for the credits to roll, tinny music in a miserable minor key playing in the background.

Yuuri grabs the bowl of tortilla chips as he settles into his own customized couch crease, easily taking the remote from Phichit's willing hands. He lets Phichit have a three-minute moment to process, another seven to aggressively tweet and update his Instagram and Snapchat stories about it, and five more to respond to subsequent replies with reaction images from a special album on his phone. 

It's been twenty minutes of Yuuri's old Disney Channel rerun by the time Phichit slumps against him, hand idle against the chip bowl that is, technically, Yuuri's now.

"What are you thinking about?"

"Honestly?" Yuuri says, feels Phichit nod against his shoulder. "Nothing."

That gets a huff of a laugh out of Phichit, but Yuuri still feels the exact moment Phichit’s gaze turns thoughtful as he lifts his head. "What’s bothering you, Yuuri?" 

A lot of things are—and yet nothing at all. Things are harder to articulate when there are no labels to them, where there isn’t the capacity to name them. And like that, feelings feel less valid, as if somehow, without a word to apply to them, they’re nothing but an overwhelming feeling of _something_ , unjustified, unexplained.

So he waits for Phichit to pick up on this—and, inevitably, he does, leaning back to study Yuuri. "Can I guess?"

This is something they used to do, when they were much younger and sitting out on the fire escape with decaffeinated Keurig beverages was the most comforting thing, and having someone else guess their problems instead of having to say them out loud was equal parts comfort and assurance that someone knows them well enough. 

Yuuri nods.

Phichit wastes no time. "The composition concert?"

Yuuri nods again. 

Phichit’s silent for a few beats. "Still no luck with it?"

Yuuri shakes his head.

"Do you want to—" Phichit hesitates. "Do you want to back out?"

Yuuri hesitates, too. He searches himself for the part screaming _yes_ , for that ever present temptation to just back out now and save himself the trouble of _maybe_ ’s. But—but that feels too much like cowardice, too little like actually taking care of himself to know when to _not_ do things, and he really, really should have learned to acknowledge the distinction between the two. 

So he says; "No."

Phichit blinks, but there’s no surprise in his eyes. "Well, okay then," he says. "There’s more than just that, huh." 

Slow and careful, Yuuri nods.

Phichit opens his mouth, closes it, then opens it again—all in the span of ten seconds, brain working overtime so visibly than Yuuri feels like he should just rip the bandaid off for both of them. But then Phichit sighs, a sigh so long and heavy Yuuri has to wonder why Phichit didn’t pursue a brass instrument instead. 

"Okay, look, Yuuri," he says. "I—I don’t want to, like, force you to talk about things you don’t want to talk about, but I really just have to—at some point I hope I can at least _know_ why you came back from your _hometown_ looking like someone broke up with you—and I can try to guess, seriously, but I really just don’t think I have enough data, you know, to accurately gu—"

"I did _not_ ," Yuuri says, "look like someone broke up with me."

"You did," Phichit fires back, hands moving around and eyes bright with concern. "I thought it was homesickness—and I get that, so I sorta just, didn’t wanna bug you about it, you know? But it’s been two weeks, and you don’t look like that when you call your sister? And sometimes you would come to breakfast looking like you haven’t slept a wink—is it nightmares? Are you having nightmares?"

"I—" Yuuri breaks off. "Dreams. Just dreams."

They have yet to stop, but they’ve lulled to a pattern now—the same one they’ve started to form near the tail end of Yuuri’s stay in Hasetsu, always with the inability to communicate with a Dream Victor, one way or another.

Phichit, none so subtle, narrows his eyes. "About Victor Nikiforov?" 

"Victor Nikiforov," Yuuri says, aghast, "did not break up with me."

"I didn’t say that, Yuuri," Phichit returns, patient.

"You were thinking it."

"You don’t know that."

"I do," Yuuri says. "I really do. And I’m telling you that is not how it went down."

"Then how _did_ it go down?" Phichit leans his head against the back of the couch, one cheek squished against a throw pillow. "Because I don’t see you smiling down at your phone, and I don’t see you listening to his radio podcasts to help you sleep. So, really, I gotta expect the worst. All I have to go by are your three-minute phone calls about him, Yuuri, help me out here—"

"Nothing—" Yuuri says. "Nothing happened."

Phichit levels him with a look. "If I tell you to call him right now, would you be able to do it?"

Yuuri feels his throat dry up. 

"Just a friendly long-distance chat between two vacationers with no bad blood between them," Phichit says. "Right?"

"There _is_ no bad blood," Yuuri says, voice all of a sudden hoarse. "But I can’t—I can’t call him."

Phichit frowns. "No?"

"No," Yuuri says. He looks down, studies his lap intently as he says; "I don’t have his number."

He expects a quiet _oh_ from Phichit, but when he finally looks up, he gets a contemplative frown, like Phichit’s trying to piece together something with more information than Yuuri possesses. "How is that even possible?" though, is all he says. 

Then; "Tell me everything."

And Yuuri can’t deny him that, because events, at least, are something he can put into words, straightforward and honest and unembellished.

Phichit’s face doesn’t change through any of it; his brows remain furrowed, and his mouth doesn’t lose the slight downturn. When Yuuri finishes, it takes a while for the expression to smoothen out, but once it does, it remains clear, like Phichit had managed to piece together what he was looking for.

"Yuuri," he says, careful. "I love you."

It’s never a good precursor to anything, when Phichit prefaces something with _I love you_ said in a tone anything but excessively cheerful.

"I love you," Phichit repeats, as if for emphasis, "and as your best friend in this whole wide world, I feel really, really compelled to tell you—that you’re thinking too much."

Yuuri releases his breath in one heavy exhale. "I had no idea."

"No, I mean, you—" Phichit’s eyes soften. "There’s always a way to communicate with someone. You know that right? Distance or language or whatever. There’s always a way."

"But I don’t—" Yuuri bites down on his bottom lip, tasting the words before trying again; "I don’t know what to say." 

It’s the biggest problem of all, sifting through things to figure out what’s most worth articulating, most worth showing. It’s easier with physical proximity, easier to gauge things that are hard enough to objectively understand to begin with, easier to figure out what’s okay and what’s not when words aren’t the only way of conveying what he needs.

A hug conveys comfort, a hand on an arm is reassurance. A kiss translates to words too unclear to be said. 

There’s none of that, when the physical body is away.

And the struggle of words becomes even more of an ordeal than it already is.

It’s terrifying, the prospect of finding a way to talk to Victor, wherever he is. Not knowing whether Victor even wants to talk, not knowing whether they still stand on the same ground, even when they had, just two weeks ago.

Phichit has always been able to read him so easily, and it shows even now. "You don’t get to assume other people’s feelings for them," he says, quiet. "That was the case with your family, right? I think it’s the same with him, too."

It’s a fair, concise point, and Yuuri doesn’t have a rejoinder. 

That coaxes a smile back on Phichit’s face, disappearing from view quickly as he leans forward to drop his head again onto Yuuri’s shoulder. "Be a little kinder to yourself, Yuuri." 

Yuuri doesn’t stare down at him. "I don't—not love myself."

He knows he's capable of things—all that's wrong with it, really, is that he always fails himself before he can realize those. It’s just a constant disconnect between where he wants to be and where he usually lands himself, and often, by the time he’s ready to objectively think things through, the incident is long done and over with, another regret he can’t alter or take back.

But Victor, maybe, is different. He’s worth finding an answer for—worth all the want and the questions and all the other things Yuuri is facing for real this time. 

It doesn’t make his feelings and thoughts any less of the frustrating jumble of emotion that they are.

"Sure," Phichit says, easy-going. "You just don't trust yourself very much sometimes."

Yuuri, this time, looks down at him.

Phichit meets his gaze with a smile. "At this point, you’re just stopping yourself from feeling things because you don’t want to understand what that means," he says. "And I get it, because most people don’t pursue first crushes with whole busy lives across the world. But this guy trusted your feelings so much he dropped everything to see if you were as trustworthy as he thought you were. If only you trusted yourself that much."

Yuuri swallows. "I’m trying."

"I know." Phichit lifts a hand, pinky finger outstretched. "And until you can say you do one hundred percent—no, one _million_ percent, then there’s plenty of us to go around trusting in you enough for all of us combined." He smiles, waving his pinky. "Don’t be so afraid of your feelings. You’re only human, Yuuri."

Painfully so, sometimes.

But then again, so is Victor—so is Victor and Yurio and his parents and everyone in the world, emotions a product of things they never really signed up for, things they probably never foresaw, but a daily part of what makes them _them_ anyway, and therefore unshakeable.

Yuuri doesn’t nod, doesn’t voice affirmation or agreement at all, but he lifts a hand to seal an unspoken pinky promise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A day before Christmas, Yuuri gets a text from a long-distance number.

It doesn’t take much deduction to guess who it is, not when the one message consists of a photo of Makkachin in a Santa costume, at parts way too small on him. The words take a long time to follow, like someone had forgotten to say them.

Or maybe like someone had taken too long to type-and-backspace their way into one message.

All it says is; _Merry Christmas!_

No explanation on how he got the number, not even a hint that this is their first conversation since Hasetsu. Leave it to Victor to do exactly what Yuuri always has second thoughts about, predictably impulsive as Yuuri’s own impulses are _un_ predictable.

Yuuri saves the picture without really thinking about it, moving to change his wallpaper into it.

He stops short as his Camera Roll loads under the wallpaper settings, unfamiliar picture after unfamiliar picture showing up one by one.

His thumbs stay frozen above the screen for a long minute.

Most of the photos are of Victor—posing in front of Hasetsu Castle, with or without Makkachin, posing against a shrine in Takashima, posing with all sorts of street food. Others are of just food in general; some Victor himself had cooked, some with half of Mari’s arm caught in the picture, like she’d jumped out of the frame before Victor can catch her in the act.

The rest are of Yuuri.

Yuuri never looking into the camera. Yuuri petting Makkachin, giving shaved ice to Yurio, sitting with hands curved and hovering above piano keys. While Victor looks comfortable in all his photos, like he’s lived there all his life despite the touristy air of every shot, Yuuri looks serene. Even the photos where he had his brows furrowed in concentration over _Salut D’Amour_ look tranquil in its stillness, as if that is the only thought occupying Yuuri’s mind.

And it was. Hasetsu narrowed down his world into the one area, but it narrowed down his thoughts into a step by step, selective process, too—digestible, manageable, at a time where he’d felt like any more sources of stress would finally make him crack. Hasetsu had slowed things down in a way that Yuuri had, up until now, been dismissing as escapism, running away into somewhere idyllic and surreal, but—looking at this version of himself, captured without thought on either his or Victor’s part—Hasetsu had made him feel real, had made him feel like his thoughts are his again, like his feelings are his and his alone.

This version of himself that had run back home because it had felt like a last resort at the time—this is the version of himself Victor met. This is the version that got to walk beside Victor, got to sleep beside Victor, got to eat with and fall asleep listening to Victor. This is the Yuuri, raw and vulnerable and real, stripped naked to the unsure child that sought solace in Victor’s books to begin with, that got to kiss Victor, that got to feel understood and known and loved through the eyes of someone that should have remained intangible.

This Yuuri, lost and frustratingly human, had been the one to meet the author that had seemed so worldly and untouchable—this Yuuri had been the one to realize that even people like Victor Nikiforov can be lost, can be so human that it hurt to watch them grow into that feeling.

People are, at their core, made of feelings. If you strip down thoughts to their bare form, if you take away all the affectations that people learn to have around others, all that’s left are the emotions those thoughts make you feel. And it is through exposing those, maybe—in letting someone take pictures of it, in letting someone understand it and relate to it—that human connection is made at its best, because to be known, in its own subtle way, is to be loved.

But Yuuri’s no writer, no philosopher, no poet.

All he knows to do is make sense of feelings, express it so that someone else can feel it and understand without the need for words he doesn’t have.

All he can do, like a nightingale, is open his mouth in a song, and hope someone hears it.

It shouldn’t have taken that long, but it’s two hours before Yuuri replies.

Even then, it’s short, as insincerely blasé as Victor’s message had been.

 _Happy birthday_.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Later, Yuuri will blame the entire crisis on Phichit.

It’s a baseless excuse, because Yuuri is, with Victor, a creature of habit, and when New Year’s comes around with the return of Victor’s midnight radio show, it’s half-instinct to sit down with Phichit and listen to it—listen to it alongside thousands of other fans in the world, waiting to count down to the new year with Victor.

It doesn’t even take a full two seconds for him to regret it.

It should be impossible, to forget the sound of Victor’s voice, but Yuuri still feels like he had, when the cheery little jingle stops and he hears Victor speak for the first time in three weeks.

His voice is foreign and familiar all at once, an abrupt onslaught of so many sewn-together contradictions that Yuuri feels dizzy, disbelieving. It’s a sudden, pressurized thing—an ache in his chest—when the feeling hits, and Yuuri has to stare down at Phichit’s phone screen, at the show logo, and think; _I miss Victor_.

 _I really, really miss Victor_.

He’s standing before the thought completes itself, and he leaves Phichit alone in the living room, running into his room and burrowing under the covers. It feels like an ironic repeat of his first week around Victor, except the feeling of giddy realization has been replaced with something heavier—the suspicion that he’d left something with Victor, or that Victor had left with something of Yuuri’s, because it’s the only explanation for the sudden gaping feeling in his chest.

It feels like homesickness all over again, only there isn’t a place to tie the feeling down to. Just the memory of a person, of their _voice_ , of their touch and their smiles and the realization that such small things is making him feel more than they should. That someone’s absence should make memories feel less vivid, less sharp, but it’s the opposite, listening to Victor; it’s a reminder, a quiet longing so similar to the one he feels, when he calls his family now.

It’s something trying to settle into place, and it’s exhausting, trying to fight it.

Phichit crawls into bed with him, earphones plugged into the phone so that Victor’s voice isn’t blaring through the whole apartment.

He wordlessly offers one earbud.

There are so many things Yuuri could think about, as he takes it. He could think about _Salut D’Amour_ , he could think about the Nishigoris’ wedding, he could think about all the things Yuuko had said about love. It’s the same feeling as its core, no matter what form it comes in, and he can feel it thrumming under skin surface, eager to be acknowledged, eager to be accepted the way it took Yuuri so long to take it from his family without complaint.

But he doesn’t think about any of that, just moves closer to Phichit under the covers and slips the earbud in.

It makes Yuuri feel quiet, Victor’s voice. It makes something urgent in him shut down, give in. It’s like a warm embrace, but more insistent, more constant amidst the ache at the lack of it.

It’s always so, so easy, to fall asleep to the lulling calm of Victor’s voice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Yuuri dreams of Victor the next few nights, he talks. He doesn’t know what he says to Dream Victor, just that, for the first time, he’d been able to approach.

Dream Victor always says something back, replies with a smile.

Yuuri still can’t make it out.

 

 

 

 

 

On that same episode, Victor announces his new book.

"The main character is a writer in a slump," is all he says about it, "arriving in a small town with his dog by his side and his heart on his sleeve."

The comments waste no time wondering—jokingly—if this might be, after all, the autobiography he was rumoured to be doing.

Victor laughs as he reads the words out loud for the audience.

He doesn’t refute any of them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The announcement feels like all that Yuuri was waiting for, to not back out of the Concert.

So he doesn’t.

He texts Victor something about the book—a _congratulations_ , maybe, his fingers too nervous and hurried to leave time for double checking—and smiles, pathetically and despite himself, when he gets a reply.

It really is a poor alternative, though, hearing Victor’s voice through his radio shows and getting to talk to him through small, inconsequential texts that definitely waste their long-distance credits.

The thin barrier between them feels more present than ever, like that. Like something is filtering their interactions.

It’s not a pleasant feeling, after weeks and weeks of constant touch and conversation.

This realization, too, feels like all that Yuuri was waiting for, to pick up where he left off on the concert piece.

When it clicks, it clicks, more comfortably than _Salut D’Amour_ felt.

When it clicks, it feels _right_ , and if, this time, Yuuri doesn’t come out of his room all night until he’s done, Phichit doesn’t point it out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The paperback for Victor’s most recent book, released late last year, comes out a week before the Concert, early March.

Yuuri remembers because Victor messages him so.

It’s a back-and-forth thing for two months.

Updates, but never more than that.

Yuuri knows they’re both waiting, for someone to _say_ something.

But Yuuri’s not the one with the words here.

Despite himself, he buys a copy, because this, too, is something he always does, personal interaction with Victor be damned.

He messages Victor back to tell him as such.

And then, because he can’t help it: _The concert is next week._

He stops in the middle of asking _Are you coming_?—backspaces instead to type _Is Yurio coming?_

Victor’s reply says; _they gave him a couple of a honorary tickets._

There’s an ill-placed smiley face after that, but it might as well not exist for all that Yuuri doesn’t notice it. Victor’s answer is neither a yes nor a no, and it’s unfair, the kind of hope that it instills in Yuuri.

The kind of _yearning_ now that the possibility is there.

 _I need to tell you something_ , he types, thumbs fumbling, heart in his throat, sitting alone in an undergraduate practice room.

Before he can send it, though, another one comes from Victor; _focus on your practice, Yuuri! But also, don’t forget to take care of yourself._

He might as well be messaging Yuuri from a few blocks away.

Still, it makes his chest feel like it’s being squeezed, and he spends the rest of his practice failing at not thinking about the difference it would make, if Victor would be there.

If Victor would always be there, as constant as he was in Hasetsu, as real and as open.

 

 

 

 

 

The concert is held in the Kaplan penthouse, a smaller affair among Juilliard staff, alumni and other professional pianists.

It’s more a gala than anything else, a chance at a brief spotlight without the pressure of criticism. Still, Yuuri sits rigid in the same table as Celestino, surprisingly more at ease than his usual, but riding on the coattails of instinctive nervousness all the same.

He watches Phichit play, listens to Phichit’s fingers paint the heaviness of moving into somewhere new and foreign with _Terra Incognita_ , stares entranced as deft notes somehow manage to convey the early stages of nostalgia that comes with the second round of homesickness. Phichit smiles to himself the whole time, at home where he is, and not for the first time, Yuuri is overwhelmed with fondness—and gratitude, somewhere underneath it all, for Phichit’s presence, steady and patient and always reliable.

There’s love and family to be found anywhere, even in a dorm room shared with a boy too extroverted to have been a good match for Yuuri—but _was_ , and still is.

It’s the ease of watching Phichit play that shakes the last of Yuuri’s ice cold nerves, leaves instead something hot sloshing around his stomach as he goes up to take his turn. He checks his phone before leaving it with Celestino, but it’s empty—no new messages, from either Victor or Yurio.

He tries to swallow past the urge to search the room, but it sits at the top of his throat even as he tries to focus on adjusting the bench in front of the piano.

His head feels clear, though. He still has to wipe his hands on his pants when he sits down, but his head doesn’t feel cluttered, doesn’t feel like it’s trying to work faster than it’s used to, just to accommodate having to process things.

For the first time, Yuuri feels like he has a piece figured out, feels like he has complete control over what he’s about to play, and how he wants it to sound.

It’s nothing foreign, nothing terrifying, just a glove that fits, exactly because that’s how he meant it.

Over the last couple of months that he’s been finalizing this piece, Yuuri has come to realize that the reason he couldn’t finish it at first was because he wanted it to sound complete. And when all he could produce was a piece that kept slowing down into a lull, kept coming back to one part midway where everything quiets down into near silence, he’d dismissed it, because the last thing he wanted was for a piece designed around his own life to cement that feeling of hurtling back down to square one.

When Phichit first started writing his piece, Yuuri had to watch it build and build, an aggressively joyous song through and through, just like its player, and he’d felt it was almost comical, that his own piece would reflect only the worst of his thoughts while Phichit can capture all of his best through a song meant to entertain.

Phichit’s piece celebrated his career, the struggles he’d gone through and, ultimately, left in the past, but Yuuri’s piece berated his past struggles—shook its head at it and scolded it and blamed it for his life falling a little short of where he wants it to be. Phichit’s piece was a steady uphill climb, but Yuuri’s was a roller coaster ride that got stuck at the bottom at some point.

But perhaps pieces like this aren’t meant to be complete, are meant to be complete only in form; in sound, though, in _feeling_ , it is something that brings itself to a low point, only to come out of it hurtling towards a peak. This was Victor’s problem, too, with his autobiography—he’d searched his life for one defining moment, had searched twenty-eight years as if it had anything to offer that would not be topped by all the other years still left in his life.

They’d both had expectations of a finished product from lives barely lived, and maybe it was that expectation that got them stuck to begin with. Especially when there’s no such thing as the best kind of life, no such thing as a complete and well-lived life when anyone, whether fifteen or twenty-four or twenty-eight or fifty or seventy, can feel lost, can be reminded of all the things that make them human, despite what kind of career and life background might back them up.

It’s liberating, somehow, to realize this.

It feels as gentle as _Salut D’Amour_ , when Yuuri’s fingers press on the keys.

If Phichit had written his piece to parallel his early beginnings, Yuuri had written his to map out the _then_ and _now_.

His piece is quick, skittish the same way he feels sometimes, jumping from one thought to another, thinking this and thinking that. One hand running across the keys, the other with a finger steadily hitting the same keys, four times each. It’s a mix of something both frantic and familiar, and it’s this that defines Yuuri’s early years with the piano, attempting to catch up while at the same time looking for a way to keep himself grounded, a mess of a contradiction.

But the piece learns to slow down, learns to manage its frenetic pace—he keeps his right hand hitting the same quick notes, lets the left relax in hitting its one-note keys, until it’s time again to match the right hand again, the epitome of an experienced pianist, two hands playing different things in support of each other.

If there was a point in his life this is most representative of, it is, probably, the decision to leave home; it’s hard not to think of flight when he plays this part, hard not to think of what it felt like to leave, as he strikes the notes with more force, hard not to think of the sense of vastness that came with going somewhere else and stepping out of the small bubble that has defined him all his life.

It’s excited, it’s scared, but it’s determined to prove something, a demand for attention.

Then it slows down again—a different slow this time, careful, hesitant, the fear creeping back in small, pretty notes that don’t quite know what to do. Shrinking in after the aggression just seconds ago, having to step back and take a breath because it’s suffocating, suddenly, to feel so overwhelmed. It’s no longer determination there, it’s helplessness tied to the need to prove something he can’t even remember anymore, it’s vulnerability at having failed friends and family and audiences—but mostly having failed himself, for all that it kept trying and trying only to cave in.

And this—this is the part where Yuuri had been stuck, in writing this piece. This had felt like an ending, rounding out to the piece back to silence, a careful finish not unlike _Salut D’Amour_ ’s. But that had felt like defeat, too, to write such an overwrought piece only to close with such sudden silence, such sudden hesitance.

Even now, Yuuri still remembers how it felt, for that silence and hesitance to resonate with him, for that vulnerability to settle in the way his hands felt before playing at the Chopin competition, for that fear to come back. He remembers being here, being in that low point, of all the thoughts that plagued him on the impromptu flight back to Japan, of the contemplation of retirement and whether or not he’s not putting proper regrets in the right perspective.

It’s so full of _doubt_ that Yuuri’s chest seizes just having to play its musical counterpart. There’s no room for that, in music; there’s no room for hesitating, especially not when most pieces are wrought with emotion from the person that had written them.

Yuuri’s own piece isn’t different, but this time, he doesn’t get swallowed up in it.

It would have been so easy, to stay in Hasetsu, to give up piano—but, as he speeds the piece back up again, he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to do that. He _loves_ piano, loves music and loves how he’s able to convey so much of what he can’t with words through his hands.

_You wouldn’t quit music, either, would you?_

It was certainty there, when he’d shaken his head so easily in response to Victor.

There are so many things in life left shaky and unsure, but this—his love for the piano, is his and his alone, and it will always and forever be something he’s sure of.

This time, when the piece hits another high, he’s not even surprised when his mind blanks out, not even surprised when there’s only one thought left behind, in perfect harmony with what he’s playing.

He’s not surprised when it’s Victor he thinks of—of the certainty and understanding he’d found in Victor. The blind faith. The earned trust. The feeling of being known, the realization he isn’t alone. It’s the reminder that he’s loved, that he deserves love, that his lows do not define him to people that are unconditionally there to support him.

Victor Nikiforov is a familiar song, but he’s one that Yuuri never saw coming; he’s a song that molded itself to match Yuuri, a song once so different, but within the span of the month became a perfect match. Something knowable in turn, something that resonates right back, something warm and trustworthy and gentle and overwhelming in its own right.

Another nightingale’s song responding to Yuuri’s own.

Both lost, both flailing, and then not, anymore.

For Victor to have felt confident enough to write something while in Hasetsu, to face his inevitabilities first—that has to mean there’s promise within it. That he’d seen hope, had seen possibilities, had seen—not a solution, nor even an escape—but an equal pair, an answer to just one question. He’d seen it in Yuuri’s playing, then had discovered it in Hasetsu.

And, if Yuuri wants to hope as well, maybe Victor had also seen it in Yuuri himself.

Music pushes and pulls, rises and falls, but throughout it all, it remains wholly emotional, remains entirely human, gives form to emotion, gives history to feelings. It arranges words and events into a story, but never as a complete one, just a fragment of a moment in time, handing it to its player and its listeners as a reminder of feeling, of potential.

It is, in the way it builds up, slow and natural, a warmth that spreads, and a warmth that stays.

It is, in that sense, a little bit like falling in love.

And, a little bit, perhaps, like understanding love, despite distance, no matter which shape that love comes in.

Music is never the be-all and end-all, as most stories aren’t, but it’s enough, to capture even for a moment the things people don’t realize about themselves.

Yuuri’s not really thinking anymore, as he brings his piece to a height. He doesn’t slow it down, to end it; instead he brings it round back right to where it started, to the consistent, repeated keys by the right hand, scattered and quick.

This time, though, it isn’t frantic.

It’s not desperate to prove something, it’s not skittish. This time, it’s Yuuri feeling the promise of a new beginning, calmer, more settled. It’s still as uncertain as it was in the beginning—but this is acceptance, too, acknowledgement of where he comes from, acknowledgement of all the things he still has left to do, twenty-four or not.

If he can give this Concert another shot, can give this piece another try, then, maybe, maybe, maybe, the rest of his music career shouldn’t be any different.

It’s a lot of _maybe’s_ , but none of it comes with fear anymore.

Yuuri feels so relieved that it’s overwhelming, when he finishes.

It’s a gutted exhale that he heaves as he stands up to bow, his heart catching up on breaths his lungs weren’t taking in.

But even that catches on his throat, when he straightens and finds Yurio leaning by the nearest doorway, expression unreadable from across all the round tables scattered around the place.

It’s unmistakable what’s happening, though, when Yuuri sees Yurio’s phone blatantly lifted in the air.

Yuuri thinks he bows some more, shakes a few hands when he comes down from the stage, catches Phichit’s knowing smile at some point, but then he’s in front of Yurio, who’s thrusting the phone, still on speaker, towards Yuuri’s chest.

"Wait for him in the lobby or something," Yurio mutters, brusque, refusing to make eye contact.

There really are so many things Yuuri could say to him right now—a proper _hello_ , _how are you_ , for one. So many things he could say to anyone in this entire room, who’d just watched him _play_ his entire music career, but not a single word comes to him, then and there, just a nod and a mumble through a closed up throat as he takes the phone.

He’s only taken about two steps out into the hallway before he’s undoing the speaker phone and pressing the screen against his ear. His voice is shaky. "Hello?"

"Yuuri," Victor says, and it sounds so close, his voice. "Oh, Yuuri, that was—"

Yuuri has to hold himself up with a hand against the wall. "You were listening?"

"The whole thing," Victor replies. He sounds near breathless as well, but it’s silent in his background, as silent as the soundproofed hallway Yuuri’s in. "The whole thing, Yuuri. Yurio was almost late—"

"I miss you," Yuuri blurts out.

There’s silence on the other end, nothing past Victor’s sharp inhale. Any other day and Yuuri would want to take it back, but he doesn’t think it’s rejection that awaits him—not from Victor, never from Victor.

But now that it’s out, Yuuri finds that he _does_ have things to say, things that need to be let out. "I—" he starts, almost biting his tongue. He takes a deep breath, tries again. "I have all your pictures on my phone. And I—I think I still have your scarf."

More silence on the other end. Yuuri doesn’t blame him, because he doesn’t know where he’s going with this.

He continues anyway. "Listen, it’s—it’s been three months since I last saw you, and I—I know we’ve been talking—but it’s not the same," he says, voice trembling alongside his hand against the wall. "It’s not the same because—because you used to always be there? And because—because everything quiets down when I listen to you talk, and—and—and it’s just that you’re _everywhere_. I try not to think about it, but I just think about it more, and sometimes—sometimes I’ll see something and I’ll think that you or Makkachin would like it and it’s—

"It’s not fair, that even though you’re there and I’m here, it still feels like—" Yuuri has to stop to take another breath. But once he stops, it’s as if everything else stops, because suddenly, he’s weary, exhausted, nothing else left to say but the naked truth. "I miss you."

 _I miss you and how_ right _it feels to be around you._

_I think I might love you._

The words get stuck with no way out, but for once, in a situation like this, Yuuri doesn’t have to fear being misunderstood.

"Yuuri." Victor’s voice, when he speaks again, is very, very small. "I’ll be there soon."

Yuuri’s hand twitches against the wall, and he blinks—down at the carpet, up at the wallpapered walls. "Be—be where?"

"I’m—" Victor’s breathlessness takes on an amused edge. "I’m on my way, I’m getting out of a cab—"

Yuuri barely registers the excuses that follow, barely registers past words like _traffic_ and _New York_ and _Yurio,_ because then he’s running down staircase after staircase, floor after floor, sometimes two steps at a time. He doesn’t trust the elevator even at a place like this, but mostly it’s just an _urge_ to run, the yearning pooling in his gut until he’s bursting into the lobby, knees complaining after ten floors’ worth of stairs.

Yuuri has never seen the Samuel B. & David Rose Building busy outside of events, but it seems even more hauntingly still today. People usually come, ballet and music students coming to and fro to the residences that the place houses, but the lobby is mostly empty when he gets there, quiet with everyone still upstairs.

He has half the mind to berate himself for leaving just like that, but it doesn’t really matter, doesn’t really matter at all, when he sees Victor.

Yuuri doesn’t know what he was expecting. Distance seems to prepare him for change, for things that have occurred without his notice, but the Victor that stands in front of him now looks the exact same: hair a little longer, maybe, but eyes and smile the same.

His coat has remnants of melting March snow, but it’s still also the same kind of warmth that welcomes Yuuri, when he reaches Victor.

It’s practically instinct, to reach for and accept a hug.

Victor’s murmuring apologies—about not making it in time to be there, about how beautiful the piece was—but Yuuri’s mind is already trying to work with his heart, which is going at a speed that _has_ to be too fast. It’s seizing, and then beating too erratically, and it feels like it’s trying to climb up his throat.

Mostly, it feels like it’s trying to burst, his heart, and Yuuri has no idea why he’d ever thought anything less of where he stands with Victor, why he’d ever understood his feelings as anything less of what they are.

It only seems fair, for all of these emotions to be aggressively rallying against him now, happy to be accepted.

Overwhelming, too, but welcome just the same.

"Never again will I let you tell me," Victor says, "that musicians aren’t good with words."

Yuuri has to laugh, against Victor’s shoulder. "Right," he says, but the words hurt to push out. "Because I was particularly eloquent there."

The first kiss against the top of Yuuri’s head is light, an echo of Victor’s goodbye kiss in Hasetsu. "You were, though," Victor says, voice so gentle that Yuuri knows it’s not his _words_ being meant here. "I got your message loud and clear, Yuuri."

It’s still something to get used to, being able to kiss Victor, but Yuuri doesn’t even startle, when it’s Victor that bends down to press his lips against Yuuri’s. Lips tasting of creamy lip balm, gloved hands cupping and trembling against Yuuri’s cheeks. It’s featherlight, almost, but it feels like a punch in Yuuri’s gut, a reminder of all the things this sets in stone—for him, for Victor, for the fact that they’re here, somehow, when up until three months ago, the only things they had in common were being habitants of a room in Yu-topia.

But touch—touch is good. It’s something Yuuri has learned to associate with Victor, the urge behind a wordless physical connection, the comfort behind a hug. Some things are meant to be voiced, while others things are impossible to be articulated, until someone understands you just enough to be able to know, to be able to tell, that sometimes touch is enough.

Words are part of Victor’s domain; they bend to his will, can express and inspire, can encourage an eighteen-year-old on the other side of the world to move instead of deal with the _what ifs_. Yuuri, on the other hand, is a creature of sound, a person built on the sound waves that represent all his emotions.

They’re both fragile, in that way, because no exclusive language is perfect, complete, when it comes to communication.

But touch is where their languages overlap, where they meet, and like this—

Like this, in Victor’s arms, unburdened from the frustration of not understanding his own feelings, it makes sense, to Yuuri.

It makes perfect sense.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Victor’s new book comes out in the fall.

He does two signings in New York City, but this time, Phichit refuses to be dragged to either of them, perfectly content in waggling his eyebrows at Yuuri on Yuuri’s way out.

It doesn’t stop Yuuri from showing up to the first Barnes & Noble event, buying a copy in-store despite already having one just so he could qualify for the prize draw.

He very much doubts Victor will give him the prize, should he win, but tradition is tradition.

It feels largely surreal, lining up now. He’s between a teenage girl and a middle-age couple, both talking about the book, and Yuuri tries to listen, but that’s difficult, too, when his eyes keep traveling back to Victor, already seated behind his desk.

He doesn’t seem to have noticed Yuuri, had believed that Yuuri was joking about coming to this, but that’s fine.

The last time Yuuri was in line like this, being there had felt like an escapist attempt. It’s hard not to hope, when you’re around celebrities—hard not to hope that you’ll be noticed, or that maybe you can at least leave with a good story to tell your friends. He himself had held that idealism, in the several times he’d shown up to one of Victor’s signings, and it’s bizarre now, to compare his current self to that.

Victor’s new book is called _Dear True Love—_ written, for the first time in Victor’s career, as an epistolary novel. It’s a series of letters written by a best-selling author to a long-time pen pal; one he’s never met in person, but one he feels emotionally attached to all the same.

The themes are simple enough: the thought that trust and emotional connection came first, in relationships, and not even distance or language barriers can change that.

It’s sentimental, over-romantic—but it’s Victor, at its core.

It’s Victor, bouncing back to try something different, only to pour his heart out into it, to rediscover something in himself, maybe, the way he and Yuuri both did, in coming to Hasetsu.

Victor brightens so quickly, too fast to give in to surprise, when he sees Yuuri.

"Well, look it is," he says, smiling up at Yuuri. It still hurts to look at Victor’s smile sometimes, the one just for Yuuri, so soft around the edges, and yet so bright. Yuuri’s fingers twitch with the urge to poke at the side of Victor’s mouth. "My favorite fan."

"I was promised another autograph if I came again," Yuuri says.

He doesn’t even know if Victor will remember; Hasetsu feels like so long ago, even though it hasn’t even been a year yet.

But he does, of course he does. Victor’s smile widens. "And I said I’d remember you."

Yuuri tries to frown, but the smile wins, tugging at one side of his own mouth. "I sure hope you remember me."

"Oh, sure," Victor says, taking the book from Yuuri, acting nonchalant, if a little overdramatic. "It would be awkward if I don’t, since we’d be in plane seats beside each other this weekend, won’t we?"

"I can pretend not to know you," Yuuri says, solemn.

Victor laughs, and it really is the most beautiful thing Yuuri has ever heard.

Hasetsu might feel so long ago, but it doesn’t feel far, in the physical sense. He doesn’t feel distant to it, the way he doesn’t feel distant to Victor, even though traveling has, and will be for a while, a primary part of their lives and their newfound relationship. It feels so long ago that they left Hasetsu—but they’ll be coming back, in a few days, summoned, once again, at Yuuko’s demand, this time to be there for the tail end of her pregnancy.

Victor’s invitation came naturally alongside Yuuri’s, and Yuuri would be lying if he said it didn’t make him feel warm, to feel no guilt, no unneeded responsibility, in associating Victor with home, and vice versa.

Victor makes no secret of the town in his new book being based on Hasetsu, either, doesn’t hide the fact that the pen pal’s home, described through the letters, is completely designed after Yu-topia. Victor’s love for the place is loaded onto every word, too personal at times.

But that’s how it works, for both pianists and writers; you bare your soul through your work, and hope for the best.

And really, that’s all they needed. That small bit of idealistic faith left, that small bit of hope.

Of desperation, almost.

"Here you go," Victor says, voice quiet, eyes shining as he slides the book back. "All signed and personalized, for my most beautiful fan."

Yuuri fights a blush at that and fails, but he succeeds mostly in ignoring Victor as he flips to take a peek at the front of the book. Victor had only written _To my dearest Yuuri_ , at the top of the page, and his signature at the bottom of it.

He knows it’s on purpose, but he still looks up to frown at Victor.

Who knows exactly what he’s doing, when he stands up to steal a kiss from the corner of Yuuri’s mouth.

"I should think that the message printed on every copy makes up for it," Victor says, close enough to whisper it to Yuuri, coy and ridiculous and yet so much himself that Yuuri feels flustered all the same.

He cradles the book against his chest, ignoring the chattering behind them that Victor’s kiss had triggered.

Victor raises an eyebrow. "I’ll see you for dinner?"

Yuuri sticks his tongue out, but he’s smiling when he walks away from the signing desk.

He waits until he’s outside and away from prying eyes before looking at the autograph again.

Victor’s _Dear True Love_ dedication is only two lines long:

_For the one that gave me both a question and an answer;_

_And the city that brought us into each other’s lives._

It’s more straightforward than Yuuri would expect, so candid for so many people to see, but Victor’s argument was that in a month’s time, Yuuri would be publishing a CD that includes a song written with Victor in mind, with a section that came into fruition only because Yuuri had met Victor.

And Yuuri thinks that’s a fair point. 

There are, in retrospect, so many threads that came together, in the month they had in Hasetsu. It hadn’t felt like it at the time, but change rarely feels like it, and answers rarely feel like answers, until you’re confronted with the reality of it. 

But Hasetsu was the catalyst for all of it, and Yuuri doesn’t know if Victor remembers this, too, from all the times he’s talked to the Nishigoris and Minako and all the other townspeople—but Yuuri doesn’t think it’s a coincidence, that the tourist influx is projected to grow even larger, for this year’s festival, thanks to Victor's unabashed description of the town. 

Victor has so much space for love and adoration in his heart, for people and things and interests and places, and Yuuri feels just a tad bit blessed, that the universe deemed it right for the two of them to meet.

Yuuri has always thought that to get something, to achieve something, to see his dreams to the very end—he's always thought he'd have to claw his way there, if he had to, that he would balance its weight on his shoulders and shoulders alone. He thinks, now, that that's not it at all. There are places and goals that he wouldn't have been able to reach, if he hadn't had a dream too large to bear alone, if he hadn’t had to crumble down and go back to where it started, if he hadn’t had to realize he didn’t _have_ to bear anything alone. 

Because he isn't. He isn't alone. 

Hasetsu is the meeting point for their separate stories—people that wouldn’t and shouldn’t have interacted the way Yuuri and Victor did, but did anyway.

 _Fate_ is too strong a word, b ut for people that have been lost together, and then found—

It fits.

 

**Author's Note:**

> see you next level✌


End file.
